Is Literature Healthy? by Josie Billington. Published by Oxford University Press, 2016. Reviewed by Dr Neil Vickers Many years ago, I blagged a ticket to an invitation-only symposium on the subject of medicine and narrative, held under the auspices of what was then the Arts and Humanities Research Board. The premise […]
Category: Book Reviews
Book Review: A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain
Christina Crosby, A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain. NYU Press, 2016. Reviewed by Ayesha Ahmad There is a paradox in Professor Christina Crosby’s biography A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain–the paralysis that constrained her body so suddenly seems to have freed the language that we all possess and contain but which is generally […]
Book Review: Multiple Autisms
Multiple Autisms: Spectrums of Advocacy and Genomic Science, by Jennifer S. Singh. University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Reviewed by Patrick Danner Ph.D. Student, University of Louisville, Rhetoric and Composition Jennifer S. Singh’s Multiple Autisms: Spectrums of Advocacy and Genomic Science weaves together several moving pieces surrounding autism research over the past 40+ […]
Book Review: This Mortal Coil
Fay Bound Alberti, This Mortal Coil: the human body in history and culture, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) Reviewed by Hazel Croft We all have stories to tell about our bodies. They are, as Fay Bound Alberti writes, ‘the inescapable material reality we live with and in.’ In today’s scientific and medical […]
Book Review: Aliceheimer’s
Aliceheimer’s. Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass By Dana Walrath. Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016. Reviewed by Dr Martina Zimmermann. Dana Walrath’s Aliceheimer’s. Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass is the second graphic memoir by an adult child about her mother’s Alzheimer’s disease, after Sarah Leavitt’s Tangle. A Story About Alzheimer’s, […]
Book Review: The Slumbering Masses
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life (Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press, 2012) Reviewed by Steffan Blayney Need a quick recharge? Power up with a power nap. Geniuses like Dali and Einstein loved sneaking in some extra ZZZs. Opening up my Mozilla Firefox web browser, a […]
Book Review: Dad’s Not All There Anymore
This is the first of a series of comic book reviews on the theme of Dementia. Reviews of Sarah Leavitt’s Tangles and Dana Walrath’s Aliceheimer’s to follow. Dad’s Not All There Anymore by Alex Demetris Reviewed by Harriet Earle As an academic, I have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia. I […]
Reclaiming Reflection: Creative Writing and the Medical Humanities (3)
Reminiscence Bumps: self-mythology and the landscapes of the mind by Eleanor Holmes When I think about the landscapes of the mind, I recall the undulations of the brain’s surface. The ridges and valleys of cortex, the gyri and sulci I had learnt about in my neuroanatomy classes aged nineteen. Those white plastic […]
Reclaiming Reflection: Creative Writing and the Medical Humanities (2)
Creative Non-Fiction: imagination and the nature of truth by Eleanor Holmes A copy of Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table lay on my bookshelf for years, a gift from my father, one of his favourite texts. The fact that I’d not actually read it until my creative writing tutor at Newcastle University, the author […]
Reclaiming Reflection: Creative Writing and the Medical Humanities (1)
Poetry and Reflection: a powerful tool for learning This post is part of a series over the next three days on the theme of Creative Writing and Medical Humanities by Dr Eleanor Holmes (pen name Eliot North). As a GP Tutor I’ve delivered seminars on the patient centred medicine (PCM) component of Newcastle […]