Medical humanities and disability studies are disciplines at the cutting edge of innovative critical work in the study of health and disability, but to date there has been no book-length examination of the relationship between the two. Although each has emerged from different heritages, they share many features, from discussing the complexities of embodiment, identifying processes of exclusion and championing user participation, to a commitment to new forms of critical writing.
In/Disciplines explores the connections between the two disciplines in detail. It presents a series of provocations about how they interact, the forms their practice take, and their strengths and weaknesses as working methods. With a focus on life stories that give accounts of health and disability experiences, it mixes creative and critical writing in an accessible manner aimed at a wide audience in both Medical Humanities and Disability Studies, and across new humanities more widely. The book asserts that both disciplines need to evaluate and challenge core assumptions if they are to remain critically relevant in the evolving study of social and cultural understanding of health and disability.
Stuart Murray is Professor of Contemporary Literatures and Film and Director of Leeds Centre for Medical Humanities at the University of Leeds, UK. He is also the current Chair of the Wellcome Trust's Medical Humanities Expert Review Group. Stuart is the author of Disability and the Posthuman: Bodies, Technology and Cultural Futures and Autism as well as co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Disability.
Corinne Saunders is Professor of English and Co-Director of the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University, UK. She specialises in medieval literature and the history of ideas and is Co-Investigator on the Hearing the Voice project and Collaborator on the Life of Breath project, both funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Sowon Park is Assistant Professor of English at UC Santa Barbara. She is the Principal Investigator of the Unconscious Memory Project funded by NEH and Co-PI of the AHRC-funded Prismatic Translation project. She specializes in neurocognitive literary criticism and Global Modernism. She is co-editor of the Global Asias series.
Angela Woods is Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Co-Director of the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University, UK. She is Co-Investigator on the Hearing the Voice project, funded by the Wellcome Trust, and co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities.
