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Call for Papers:
gender forum - "Literature and Medicine: Women in the Medical Profession"
(guest editor Prof. Dr. Carmen Birkle, Uni Marburg)
This special issue of gender forum focuses on the intersections between
medicine, literature, and gender, also taking into account the relevance
of ethnicity and class. The interest in the interface of literature and
medicine from the specific point of view of gender is triggered by the
intriguing similarities between the medical and literary disciplines.
The doctor, like the literary scholar, is faced with a text, a narrative
voiced by the patient either through language or bodily symptoms. In
order to understand this narrative, the doctor, like the scholar, needs
to listen closely, to examine the constituents of the narrative
carefully, to consider the subjectivity of the narrative, to read
between the lines, and to interpret ambiguities coded in metaphorical
language. The relationship between reader and text – on both levels – is
embedded in the gender matrix of a given context. Furthermore, Sontag’s
analysis of the ways in which illnesses are used as metaphors to express
social, political, moral, or cultural crises offers fruitful ground for
discussion.
We invite papers that discuss both the situation and positions of women
in the medical world – for example, as patients, doctors, nurses – and
the representation of these situations in literature.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to, discussions of
- patient narratives
- women doctors
- doctor-patient relationships
- nursing the nation
- engendering the hospital
- women and madness
- illness as a metaphor
- the female body as subject to discourses of health, in regard to
pregnancy and birth
(cosmetic) surgery
breast cancer
food and eating habits affecting women (e.g. bulimia, anorexia, weight
reduction)
Contributions by medical practitioners, scholars of medical history as
well as by scholars of literature, culture, media, history, and related
disciplines are invited.
Please send a 200-word proposal as well as a 200-word CV by March 1,
2009 to [log in to unmask] The final paper in MLA format is
due on April 30, 2009. The issue is scheduled to appear in the summer of
2009. Articles should conform to the “gender forum” style sheet
(available for download at
http://www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de/stylesheet.pdf) and should not
exceed 8,000 words in length. Please include a bio-blurb of 5 to 10
lines and an abstract of 10 to 15 lines. Use endnotes and fully
documented references at the end of the article. For further information
on the journal, please visit our homepage at
http://www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de or contact us via email at
[log in to unmask]
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gender forum
Prof. Dr. Beate Neumeier (Editor)
Universität zu Köln
Englisches Seminar
Albertus-Magnus-Platz
D-50923 Köln
Tel. ++49-(0)221-470-3030
Fax ++49-(0)221-470-6931
E-Mail: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Internet: http://www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de
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The Queen's College
Oxford
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