In this dissertation, I tell the story of midcentury attempts to establish, develop, and study bibliotherapy in the US. I follow three groups-hospital librarians, psychologists and psychiatrists, and language arts educators-from the 1930s to the 1960s, when each in its own ways expressed belief in the therapeutic power of reading and set out to enact that belief as a legitimate practice in the evolving contexts of its profession and in the broader culture. These professionals tried to learn what happened within people during and after reading, and they attempted to use what they learned to apply reading toward healthy ends. Today, therapeutic reading has become commonplace to the extent that it seems natural. In this dissertation, I aim to recover and explore the midcentury processes by which therapeutic reading came to seem at once natural, medical, and scientific. I argue that midcentury bibliotherapy functioned in concert with an evolving cultural narrative that I call "reading for health." The reading for health narrative gathers up into a coherent story various and deep beliefs and commonplaces about the power of books over our minds and our bodies. In midcentury bibliotherapy, reading for health was reinvigorated as a story about the marriage of science and culture, a unity narrative that claimed the iconic book-capable of swaying minds and societies alike, and burnished with all that western civilization signified-for the professions that applied reading toward their healthy ends. As I demonstrate, however, these narratives were not confined to discrete professions, but functioned as a part of a larger cultural movement set upon the shifting fault lines of the humanities and science. Each of the groups I follow took an avid interest in what I have called the embodied reader. Rather than viewing reading as an act of a disembodied mind, they understood the practice as a psychosomatic experience in which mind and body could not be disconnected. Moreover, they believed that reading could capitalize on the embodied nature of thought and affect, and engender healthy effects. In this way, the embodied reader was constructed as a new, modern locus of both the literary experience and the therapeutic ethos. By valuing above all else how reading could be used to achieve health, advocates of bibliotherapy fashioned a form of applied humanities, one that defined the meaning and judged the value of books in terms of their utility and efficacy. In so doing, they contributed to the development of a form of the medicalized humanities that now resonates in three contemporary sites: (1.) the study and use of bibliotherapy in clinical psychology; (2.) the dominant and naturalized approach to books known as therapeutic reading; and (3.) the medical humanities. / Ph. D.

HIV is one of the world’s most potent killers. It’s a name we have most likely heard of before, and yet there are aspects of this disease that do not get as much of the spotlight. One such aspect of HIV is adherence. Adherence is a colossal issue when dealing with anti-retroviral (ART) medications. A lack of adherence to ART dosage can lead to viral immunity and even AIDS if not treated. Despite many attempts from providers to solve the issue of adherence, studies tell us that the challenges of adherence lie within deep-seeded sociocultural and economic backgrounds. As a result, an anthropological approach seems necessary in order to grasp these challenges. Overall, I believe that adherence is learned and innate. I aim to prove this by exploring the various provider discourses regarding HIV adherence by delving into the history of AIDS, the patient/provider hierarchy, and media representations of HIV.

This study explores the sociological factors influencing the high prevalence of type 2 diabetes in Mexican immigrant and Mexican-American populations of the United States. Type 2 diabetes is one of the most important concerns in public health today, and is characterized by especially high prevalence in ethnic minority populations, particularly in Mexican-Americans. Type 2 diabetes is nearly entirely preventable through healthy diet and lifestyle, and currently represents an enormous financial burden to the health care system. Its unequal burden on the Mexican-American population is a reflection of a systematic failure to consider the sociological factors that affect the prevention and treatment of diabetes. This piece explores themes of acculturation into American society by Mexican immigrants, acculturative theories of health disparity, culturally specific attitudes towards health, diet, and diabetes, and cultural competency in the medical community.

abstract: By focusing on photojournalists for LIFE and Ladies’ Home Journal, I investigate mental health care in state institutions located in America during the Great Depression and World War II immediately prior to the great deinstitutionalization that began in the 1950s. Relying upon scholars of medical humanities, social theory, disability studies, feminist studies, the history of psychiatry, and the history of art, I consider the iconography used to represent mental illness in photography during the first half of the twentieth century to explore the ways mentally ill individuals were presented as disordered and lacking humanity. I explore the didactic nature of both photography and film, emphasizing how the artists and directors imbued their mediums with medical credibility and authority. The photographs of Alfred Eisenstaedt, Jerry Cooke, and Esther Bubley from the 1930-40s reveal the state of mental health care in America during the Great Depression and World War II. I will investigate the stereotypes seen in representations of mental illness in photographs and how these depictions shaped and were in dialogue with popular films like Spellbound (1945), The Snake Pit (1948), The Three Faces of Eve (1957), and Marnie (1964). As a point of contrast to the images and films representing mental illness, I examine depictions of healthy people in mental health clinics during this time. Finally, I offer four examples of public, contemporary art, including House for a Gordian Knot (2013), Bloom (2013), 1000 Shadows (2013), and Faces of Mental Health Recovery (2013), that explore mental illness to illustrate the enduring legacy of the iconography and stereotypes represented in the photography and films explored in the first half of this dissertation. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Art History 2019

This thesis will focus on what Mechanic terms "cultural and social aspects of medical care"; more specifically, it is the layman's evaluation of medical practitioners and practices. Medical practices are defined as the behavior directed toward maintenance or improvement of health while medical orientation designates the cognitive and affective attitudes toward health care.

An estimated 300,000 people contract Lyme disease in the USA every year, 10-20% of whom will experience long-term symptoms even after antibiotic treatment. These patients are said to have Chronic Lyme Disease (CLD). However, diagnostic guidelines, treatment protocols, and the etiological existence of CLD have been the subject of much controversy in the biomedical field, leading to negative mental and physical health outcomes for of patients with CLD. Patient support networks focused on illness experience, known as biosocialities, have formed in response to this controversy. CLD biosocialities create opportunities for patients to participate in biomedical activism and the scientific research process. A historical precedent for biosocial impact on biomedical knowledge and improved health outcomes has been established from patient activists with HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, and PTSD. The impact of CLD patients’ biosocial activism on a scientific and sociological level is evaluated through an examination of the publications of CLD support networks and biomedical research publications. CLD biosocial activism has resulted in more patient-centered research endeavours, etiological proof of CLD, improved diagnostic technologies, and new treatment protocols. These biomedical results have implications for improved CLD patient health outcomes and credibility for CLD as a legitimate disease on a biological and sociological level.

Arts and humanities programming is becoming increasingly incorporated in the medical school, balancing the biomedical paradigm, and nurturing human and emotional qualities and understandings in medical students. Music is often listed among these arts and humanities disciplines; yet there exists an acknowledged gap in the literature pertaining to musical activities and programming in the medical school, despite the prevalence of choirs, a cappella groups, small instrumental ensembles, and musical theatre programs in medical schools. Literature on choirs, musical ensemble, and community music suggests that choral singing can cultivate many of the intra and interpersonal skills that medical humanities programming encourages, such as empathy, cooperation, self-awareness, and human connection. Within the medical humanities, music has been tied to metaphors of “medicine as a performing art” or “the art of listening,” but very little literature exists delving into the actual musical experience of medical students. Drawing from medical humanities, community music, and education theory, and shaped by the metaphor of musical and emotional ‘resonance,’ this phenomenological study explores the relationships between choral singing and medical scholarship. Through semi-structured interviews, the primary goal of this inquiry was to develop in-depth understandings of the experiences of medical students singing as members of a musical community of practice: an extra-curricular medical school choir at a Canadian university. Findings indicate that choir is an informal, non-medical venue where students can engage with their musical identity during medical school; that choral singing can offer a means of stress-relief and creative outlet, mitigating symptoms of student burnout; and that engagement in the choir builds meaningful relationships and a supportive, connected community. Moreover, this study describes the role of music and choral singing in medical humanities and medical education, as well as suggests how involvement in a medical school choir may influence a medical student’s professional identity formation.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s pioneering work of fantasy fiction, The Lord of the Rings, was written in a period of twelve years, starting in 1937 during WWII and ending in 1949 a few years after the war ended. However, Tolkien’s experience with war began in 1915, when he entered combat in WWI as a young second lieutenant. Understandably, Tolkien’s war experiences have led many fans and scholars to question to what extent the World Wars influenced his works. In response to these queries Tolkien adamantly denied any connection, stating in the forward to the second edition of LOTR that “The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion.” Despite Tolkien’s flat denial of any connection between his personal war experiences and his fictional world, many critics have dedicated their studies to identifying concrete similarities that exist between LOTR and WWI. Yet, there exists a substantial and entirely ignored connection between Tolkien’s own wartime experience and his writings. More specifically, no significant study exists examining the connection between Tolkien’s depictions of medical treatments in LOTR and his own experiences with wartime medicine. These connections are particularly noteworthy because after the trauma of the Somme, Tolkien spent almost the entirety of the war as an invalid, in and out of war hospitals. Tolkien’s descriptions of medical remedies, which are richly detailed and significant to the plot, are therefore connected to his own experience. Examining each of these remedies within LOTR and linking them to medical practices used in WWI reveals previously unidentified points of correlation.

No description available.

<p>  </p> <p>Medicine is often referred to as both a science and an art. The scientific rigor of medicine has allowed for the advanced and effective treatment of disease whereas the humanistic art of medicine has allowed for clinicians to uncover how best to care for their patients in a compassionate manner. This dissertation hopes to discover how medicine can coordinate scientific expertise with compassionately focused care. The goal of this dissertation, then, is to uncover how medicine can begin to develop a more personalized medicine in which patient’s values and life-plans are coordinated with a scientific understanding of the treatment of disease. First, this dissertation establishes how medicine can be split into two perspectival understandings of disease (a first-personal and second-personal understanding), then it argues how these two understands can be coordinated with one another to develop a more holistic understanding of patient care. Next, this dissertation illustrates how concepts from phenomenology hold relevance within clinical practice in order to show how clinicians can develop a more robust understand of their patients as persons. This understanding is then used to recapture an account of the clinical relevance of empathy so that clinicians are better able to imagine what it might be like to be a patient living through illness.</p>