The COVID pandemic : essays, book reviews, and poems

This book contains several critical essays, book reviews, and poems that address the current pandemic to mark a sad but hopeful first anniversary of COVID. Similar to many academic journals, the Journal of Medical Humanities, in which these contributions were first published, has received a number of submissions during the first year of the pandemic relating directly to it. In the early months, the journal saw an unprecedented number of poetry submissions from physicians who seemed to be turning to verse as a way to memorialize what was happening, to find ways of healing from the devastating number of dying patients, and to capture the exhaustion and anxiety of caring for others day after day without respite. By publishing this selection, the volume editors honor and thank all those who have been caring for patients, teaching and mentoring students, and as such have been contributing to our understanding and awareness of this crisis. Previously published in Journal of Medical Humanities , Volume 42, issue 1, March 2021 Chapters “COVID-19, Contagion , and Vaccine Optimism”, “Virile Infertile Men, and Other Representations of In/Fertile Hegemonic Masculinity in Fiction Television Series”, “Movement as Method: Some Existential and Epistemological Reflections on Dance in the Health Humanities” and “The Ethic of Responsibility: Max Weber’s Verstehen and Shared Decision-Making in Patient-Centred Care” are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com. Contents 5 The COVID Pandemic: Selected Work 7 Planetary Health Humanities—Responding to COVID Times 8 Abstract 8 Introduction 9 Planetary health 9 Health humanities 11 Planetary health humanities 15 Conclusion 19 References 20 Placing the Blame: What If “They” REALLY Are Responsible? 22 Abstract 22 Setting the problem 22 The complexity of accuracy in imagined communities 26 The Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities 28 China and the Chinese 40 Endnotes 48 References 49 COVID-19, Contagion, and Vaccine Optimism 55 Abstract 55 References 65 Sinophobic Epidemics in America: Historical Discontinuity in Disease-related Yellow Peril Imaginaries of the Past and Present 67 Abstract 67 Introduction 67 Sinophobia in the classical period: 19th- and 20th-century Yellow Peril 69 The classical imagination of Chinese response to infectious disease 72 Sinophobia in the contemporary period: 21st-century racialization of SARS and COVID-19 75 The contemporary imagination of the Chinese response to infectious disease 78 Conclusion 80 References 81 Letting Go of Familiar Narratives as Tragic Optimism in the Era of COVID-19 85 Abstract 85 Introduction 85 Isolation and trauma 87 Pandemics, privilege, and other failures of imagination 89 Trauma, perspective, and privilege 89 This is not how the apocalypse is supposed to work 96 Trauma and the case for “tragic optimism” 98 Endnotes 103 References 103 Masks in Medicine: Metaphors and Morality 106 Abstract 106 References 109 Reading for Pandemic: Viral Modernism by Elizabeth Outka, New York: Columbia University Press, 2020 111 References 116 The Health Humanities and Camus’s the Plague, Edited by Woods Nash, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2019 117 Reference 118 Love in the Time of COVID 119 Inflorescence of Mistrust 120 “A Sick Child is Always the Mother’s Property”: The Jane Austen Pediatric Trauma Management Protocol 121 Abstract 121 References 129 Beside Oneself with Rage: The Doubled Self as Metaphor in a Narrative of Brain Injury with Emotional Dysregulation 130 Abstract 130 The problem of post-brain-injury anger 132 Metaphorical conceptualizations of anger 133 Three cases of the self doubled in anger: The Stranger, Mr. Hyde, and the Hulk 136 Discussion 141 References 144 Virile Infertile Men, and Other Representations of In/Fertile Hegemonic Masculinity in Fiction Television Series 146 Abstract 146 Introduction 146 The significance of male infertility representations 147 Theoretical framework: hegemonic masculinity 148 Methods: researching representations of in/fertile masculinity 150 Results: four representations of in/fertile men 152 The virile in/fertile man 153 The secretly non-/vasectomized man 155 The intellectual eunuch 156 The enslaving post-apocalyptic man 157 Discussion: diversifying representations of in/fertile men 159 References 161 Movement as Method: Some Existential and Epistemological Reflections on Dance in the Health Humanities 164 Abstract 164 Introduction 164 What are the health humanities? 165 Dancing beyond dualism 166 Some reflections on dance as healing: existential tethering 167 The moving self 167 Attunement 168 Some reflections on dance as knowing: epistemological untethering 170 The beyond-rational knower 171 Dance as coming to know and as knowing-with 172 Concluding thoughts: dance, holism and humanity 175 References 176 The Ethic of Responsibility: Max Weber’s Verstehen and Shared Decision-Making in Patient-Centred Care 178 Abstract 178 Decision-making in medicine: the conflict between EBM and PCC 179 Rationalization and medicine: formal and substantive reasoning 181 Medical ethics and political sociology 185 Verstehen as the method of the ethic of responsibility 188 Conclusion 190 References 191 When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment by Ryan T Anderson 193 References 196 The Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer’s Disease Life-Writing by Martina Zimmermann, London, UK: Palgrave McMillan, 2017 201 The Art of Death by Edwidge Dandicat, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2017 201 Reference 203