Ph.D. candidate Paul Blom studies the representation of psychological trauma and violence in literature and media. In his work with early-20th century American literature, he has found that authors were still able to recognize trauma even without the clinical language we know today.
“The idea is helping someone see themselves and realize, ‘Oh, this is what I’m going through’ — or at least, ‘I feel represented, I’m not the only person,’ — it matters on so many levels, even if we’re looking at work decades ago,” Blom said.
Health humanities can also venture outside of prose. Poems, photography, art and research are just a few examples of submissions published by the student-led Health Humanities Journal.
Dance is also a creative way to study health narratives.
In Jack’s past research about how writing can help peoples’ experiences living with diabetes, an undergraduate student working on the project in the HHIVE Lab found that participants in the study had a pattern of bad experiences with body image. The student thought of dance as a different way to be in one’s body and initiated a diabetes and dance research project.
“I think that’s really unique that we’re in a space where undergraduates can drive a project and make it happen,” Jack said.
Catherine Pabalate joined the HHIVE Lab at the beginning of her sophomore year. She is in the process of submitting a research proposal about drug campaigns for HIV/AIDS and the extent they promote responsibilization — when a patient is charged with the responsibility of remaining healthy.
The concept of responsibilization also has a huge impact on mental health care, Pabalate said.
“There’s this mindset that mental health is a ‘you problem,’” she said. “It’s due to factors in a person’s life, and it can sometimes overlook the more structural factors that may be causing the stress that leads to poor mental health.”
According to Weed, health is often framed as a binary — either healthy or sick — when in reality, there’s a continuum.
Some people have found it helpful to think of mental illness as a disability, needing more support systems and accommodations, rather than as an intrinsic problem, she said.
“So [mental health] seems like a kind of groundswell from students,” Weed said. “These are questions that they’re grappling with, and want to understand through these lenses of disability studies, health humanities, and I’m sure this is also true in other disciplinary contexts as well.”
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