Health Care, Social Justice, and United States Literature since 1900

FAIN: FEL-282209-22

Phillip J. Barrish
University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX 78712-0100)

Research and writing leading to a book examining U.S. literary works that engage health care at a systemic level. 

My book project seeks to intervene in the closely related fields of literature and medicine and narrative medicine. Most existing scholarship in these fields draws on literary works and other expressive culture as a resource for understanding the illness experience, analyzing representations of medical practitioners, or probing—and deepening—practitioner-provider interactions. By contrast, my book explores U.S. literary works that grapple with health care as a system: a complex, often fragmented set of public and private institutions, political choices, delivery models, and people who play a wide range of roles both within and outside of clinical spaces. Critically engaging with literary works that approach health care as a system expands our ability to speak to issues of social justice in ways that include but also transcend individual patient or provider experiences. I seek support to finish two remaining book chapters and prepare the manuscript for submission to an academic press.