Topic Area: DEI
Presented By: Nicole McCleese
Abstract:
In 2020 feminists have theorized the pandemic in two public feminism examples of note. First, in an MLA webinar, “Medicine, Narrative, Pandemic, Power,” where Paula Krebs facilitated a discussion between Rita Charon and Aakritii Pandita about narrative medicine as an anti-racist praxis for recalibrating the power relationship between minority patient and doctor. They discussed current impediments to health disparities, and Charon stressed the importance in graduate school humanities education and medical students training in Narrative Medicine and Social Medicine for interdisciplinary events to changing health disparities. Similarly, the feminist theory journal, Signs, responded with “COVID-19 and the Language of Racism.” As an Adams Academy Fellow and NICE Fellow in 2020, I responded to health disparities concerns through the lens of black feminist scholarship on health studies to develop an upper-level feminist theory course in literary studies using crip methods for literary and cultural analysis, “Crip Narrative Medicine.” Course modules include: “Revisiting Charon’s Narrative Medicine with Crip Theory in COVID-19,” “Bodies in Short Fiction Crip Theory,” “Dementia and Supercip Narratives,” “Embodying NYC and Detroit” and “Crip Indigeneity.” This informative panel, positioned at the intersections of anti-ableist and anti-racist pedagogy, features inclusive English undergraduate student presentations as part of an interdisciplinary public feminism course project on “Black, Feminist, Queer, Crip Narrative Medicine.” By bringing together black feminist scholarship on medicine and disability, through the course learning objective on crip methodologies, students will share research on new media, film, literature, and critical theory.