The belief in the necessity to integrate the study of the arts and humanities into medical education and practice has gained wide currency in the last decades, especially with the emergence and development of Medical Humanities. While the “humane” nature of medicine is not necessarily new and is often emphasized by medical practitioners as an important component of their profession, there is nevertheless a certain resistance to inderdisciplinary medical studies. This resistance stems from the idea that medicine should predicate its education and practice on the urgent need of health and life, which has no time and space for deep intellectual deliberations, for philosophizing or for the use of lofty theoretical concepts. In that sense, the benefits arising from the insights of the arts and humanities should only occur within certain limits, without trespassing their specialized realms. This anxiety is furthered by the increasing number of patients who claim to have diagnosed their illnesses through information found on the internet, or by those who claim to have cured themselves through alternative medicine. On the other hand, many scholars seek new ways to break the firm boundaries of medicine as well as its authority over other disciplines.
The next issue of Trespassing aims to address these debates. Potential questions to be addressed are: How do the arts and humanities help medical practice to understand the human condition? What role does narrative play in medical treatment? How are doctors and nurses represented in literature, film, and popular culture? What lies behind positive and negative stereotypes of medical professionals? What are the political implications of the hospital as an institution? What are the possible ethical difficulties created by the recent developments in medical technology? How does medicine reproduce and resolve hierarchical power relations based on race, ethnicity, gender, and appearance? What role does humor and laughter play in medical practice?
Areas of exploration/inquiry include but are not limited to:
- Medicine, Arts and Humanities
- Medicine and / in Literature
- Medicine and / in Film
- Medicine and / in Popular Culture
- Medicine in the Age of Internet
- Medicine and the Problem of Authority
- Medicine and Gender
- Medicine and Race
- Medicine and Capital
- Medicine, Humor, Laughter
- Symptom, Diagnosis, Reading, Detection
Prospective contributors should submit an abstract of approximately 500 words and a brief resume by March 15, 2014 to [email protected] or [email protected]
Our guest editor for this issue is Hivren Demir-Atay, PhD, University of Gaziantep
Selected authors will be invited to submit full papers (of maximum 9000 words) according to the style guidelines. Acceptance of the abstract does not guarantee publication since all papers will be subject to double blind peer-review. Submissions are accepted in English.