Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal
@synapsisjournal.bsky.social
Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal was founded in 2017 at Columbia University by Arden Hegele, a literary scholar, and Rishi Goyal, a physician. Our mission is to develop conversations about medical and humanistic ways of knowing
Next up, Sarah Roth discusses recovery from a double mastectomy, and the crucial supportive role of queer media (like FX's Dying for Sex and Miranda July's novel All Fours) and communities in their processes of self-fashioning. Read it here!
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/05/09/t...
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/05/09/t...
Thresholds of the Body - S Y N A P S I S
This spring, when I was recovering from a double mastectomy, I consumed a lot of media. Propped up on a wedge pillow as family and friends filtered through with food and news of the world outside, I b...
medicalhealthhumanities.com
May 9, 2025 at 7:53 PM
Next up, Sarah Roth discusses recovery from a double mastectomy, and the crucial supportive role of queer media (like FX's Dying for Sex and Miranda July's novel All Fours) and communities in their processes of self-fashioning. Read it here!
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/05/09/t...
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/05/09/t...
Next, Emily Waples reviews the FX series "Dying for Sex," starring Michelle Williams. How does the show reflect current research on sex, illness, and dying, as well at the earlier podcast it was adapted from? Read it here:
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/04/30/s...
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/04/30/s...
Sex for the Dying: Palliative Kink and FX's Dying for Sex - S Y N A P S I S
“The aspects of death and sex are intimately intertwined for both are part of life,” begins a 1968 article in the Journal of Sex Research; “This applies for the normally healthy human being in general...
medicalhealthhumanities.com
April 30, 2025 at 11:27 PM
Next, Emily Waples reviews the FX series "Dying for Sex," starring Michelle Williams. How does the show reflect current research on sex, illness, and dying, as well at the earlier podcast it was adapted from? Read it here:
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/04/30/s...
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/04/30/s...
And Dr. Peter A. DePergola II writes on the ethics of care, honesty, and the refusal to "tell the polite lie." What can Tolstoy teach us about shared vulnerability, of confronting death head-on, and of plain, authentic speech?
Read it below!
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/04/28/r...
Read it below!
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/04/28/r...
Refusing to Tell the Polite Lie: Lessons on Courageous Veracity from Ivan Ilyich's Ethicist - S Y N A P S I S
In Leo Tolstoy’s (1828–1910) masterful novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the lesser-known and often underappreciated character of Gerasim—a young, poor, uneducated peasant with the unenviable task of...
medicalhealthhumanities.com
April 29, 2025 at 10:11 PM
And Dr. Peter A. DePergola II writes on the ethics of care, honesty, and the refusal to "tell the polite lie." What can Tolstoy teach us about shared vulnerability, of confronting death head-on, and of plain, authentic speech?
Read it below!
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/04/28/r...
Read it below!
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/04/28/r...
And up next is Ajitpaul Mangat's review of Jina B. Kim's upcoming monograph Care at the End of the World: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Crip-of-Color Writing, out soon from Duke University Press. Check it out below:
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/03/31/i...
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/03/31/i...
Infrastructural Freedom Dreaming: On Jina B. Kim's "Care at The End of The World" - S Y N A P S I S
Jina B. Kim begins her new book – as the title, Care at The End of The World: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Crip-Of-Color Writing (2025), makes clear – at the end.
medicalhealthhumanities.com
March 31, 2025 at 5:40 PM
And up next is Ajitpaul Mangat's review of Jina B. Kim's upcoming monograph Care at the End of the World: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Crip-of-Color Writing, out soon from Duke University Press. Check it out below:
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/03/31/i...
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/03/31/i...
Next, Heather Glenny examines "The Substance" through the lens of Lauren Berlant’s concept of “lateral agency,” imagining a type of noncompliance that doesn’t rely on active agency. How can we read the film differently in this light? Read it here!
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/03/02/t...
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/03/02/t...
The Horror of Noncompliance: Instructional Language and Unruly Bodies in "The Substance" (2024) - S Y N A P S I S
Loud and grotesque, “The Substance” centers misogyny, consumerism, and the centripetal vortex of capitalism’s demands on (re)productive labor. It shatters the possibility of suspension: both Elisabeth...
medicalhealthhumanities.com
March 3, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Next, Heather Glenny examines "The Substance" through the lens of Lauren Berlant’s concept of “lateral agency,” imagining a type of noncompliance that doesn’t rely on active agency. How can we read the film differently in this light? Read it here!
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/03/02/t...
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/03/02/t...
And Sabina Dosani writes on two illness narratives - Tony Kushner’s 1991 play Angels in America and Hilary Mantel’s 2003 memoir Giving Up the Ghost - through the lens of the supernatural, and offers a reparative reading which takes seriously the spectral.
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/02/25/g...
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/02/25/g...
Ghosts and Angels: The Supernatural in Illness Narratives - S Y N A P S I S
As a psychiatrist, the question of how to respond to “the experience that medicine can’t describe,” particularly when that experience invokes the supernatural, is important. How should I, a medically ...
medicalhealthhumanities.com
February 26, 2025 at 5:44 PM
And Sabina Dosani writes on two illness narratives - Tony Kushner’s 1991 play Angels in America and Hilary Mantel’s 2003 memoir Giving Up the Ghost - through the lens of the supernatural, and offers a reparative reading which takes seriously the spectral.
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/02/25/g...
medicalhealthhumanities.com/2025/02/25/g...
