Tag: Illness and Society

Impact of the Reading Bodies Anthology

Post author By Olivia Glaze
Post date 24/03/2025
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The Reading Bodies project aims to challenge common assumptions about burnout by fostering communication and a sense of community through creativity. One of the main goals of the Reading Bodies: Burnout, Overload, and Resilience creative anthology – published in collaboration with Riptide Journal (2024) – was to help reduce social stigma through language and artistic expression.

To understand the impact of the anthology, we shared feedback forms with participants to learn if and how their attitudes and behaviours toward burnout had changed since taking part in the project.

By measuring the data from these feedback forms, we have identified key impacts such as building community and behavioural change. For example, 80% of respondents said that when reading the anthology, they felt a sense of shared experience and community. Additionally, a further 80% of respondents said that by contributing to the anthology, they have an increased willingness to share ideas and experiences about burnout, overload, and resilience.

‘[The anthology] creates a powerful sense of solidarity, care and community amongst people who will never meet but share solidarity through creativity.’
Anthology Contributor

‘[The book] being made and out in the world is a very empowering feeling.’
Anthology Contributor

You can read the digital version of the anthology as a flipbook and via our website here. You can also find the anthology on the Behavioural and Cultural Insights Hub, a knowledge-sharing platform for healthy practices developed in collaboration with the WHO Regional Office for Europe.

To read an interview with Katharine Murphy and Olivia Glaze discussing the public engagement initiatives from the Reading Bodies project, please click here.

We plan to apply insights from the anthology on the language used to describe feelings of burnout to develop resources that help medical professionals better understand patient experiences.

We hope the project will inspire further conversations about the importance of health and mental health in our personal and professional lives.

Tags Burnout, Illness and Society, Impact, Medical Humanities, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Public Engagement, Resilience

Events News

Reading Bodies at upcoming conferences

Post author By Katharine Murphy
Post date 12/03/2025
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Prof. Katharine Murphy and Dr Olivia Glaze will be presenting research relating to the Reading Bodies project at the forthcoming Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland 70th Annual Conference in Edinburgh, 7-8 April 2025. Our papers are part of a panel on ‘Cultural Portrayals of Illnesses and Disabilities in the Modern Luso-Hispanic World’, in collaboration with academics in Hispanic and Portuguese Studies at the University of Leeds.

Our research findings for Reading Bodies will also be presented at TONGUES: Medical Humanities across linguistic and cultural frontiers, the Northern Network for Medical Humanities Congress, 21-23 May 2025 (online).

Tags Illness and Gender, Illness and Society, Illness Narratives, Literary Studies, Multilingual Medical Humanities

Articles News

Reading Bodies Illustration

Post author By Katharine Murphy
Post date 27/08/2024
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Artist Katharine Howell has illustrated the Reading Bodies collaborative process with Riptide Journal, in preparation for our forthcoming anthology on Burnout, Overload and Resilience. We’re delighted to share her illustration below:

You can find more information about the artist here.

Tags Burnout, Illness and Society, Illness Narratives, Literary Studies, Medical Humanities, Mental Health, Resilience

Events News

Reading Bodies Creative Writing Workshop: Burnout, Overload, and Resilience – 14 June 2024

Post author By Olivia Glaze
Post date 20/06/2024
No Comments on Reading Bodies Creative Writing Workshop: Burnout, Overload, and Resilience – 14 June 2024

Thank you so much to our participants and speakers for joining our Creative Writing workshop on “Burnout, Overload, and Resilience,” held at the University of Exeter on June 14, 2024. The event was organised by Prof. Katharine Murphy (Principal Investigator for Reading Bodies), Dr. Sally Flint (Lecturer in Creative Writing), and Dr. Olivia Glaze (AHRC Postdoctoral Researcher) and we were thrilled to welcome such a diverse group to the event – which included teachers, entrepreneurs, NHS practitioners, yoga teachers, a live illustrator, academics, and postgraduate students.

Tags Burnout, Illness and Society, Illness Narratives, Medical Humanities, Mental Health, Overload, Resilience

Events News

Reading Bodies Workshop II, University of Exeter, 23 May 2024

Post author By Katharine Murphy
Post date 31/05/2024
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Thanks to all our wonderful speakers from the Universities of Belfast, Boston (USA), Cambridge, Exeter, Kent, London and Sheffield, for our second international Reading Bodies workshop, hosted by the University of Exeter on 23 May 2024. The workshop was organised by Prof. Katharine Murphy (Principal Investigator for Reading Bodies) and Dr Olivia Glaze (AHRC Postdoctoral Researcher). Prof. Nicolás Fernández-Medina (Chair of Romance Studies at Boston University) delivered a brilliant keynote on Health, Disease, and Society in the Early Ramón Gómez de la Serna. The programme included specialists in Spanish, Portuguese, English, French and German, and a hybrid Roundtable on interdisciplinary approaches to Reading Bodies in Literatures and Cultures.

Tags 19th Century, Illness and Gender, Illness and Society, Illness Narratives, Literary Studies, Medical Humanities, Mental Illness

Events News

Reading Bodies Exeter Workshop – 23 May 2024

Post author By Katharine Murphy
Post date 10/05/2024
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We’re looking forward to our second international workshop, hosted by the University of Exeter on 23 May 2024. All are welcome to attend – please reserve your place here.

Highlights include speakers across 4 languages, a keynote by Prof. Nicolás Fernández-Medina (Chair of Romance Studies at Boston University), an interdisciplinary Reading Bodies Roundtable, and a Stage Rehearsal of Multilingual Medical Humanities (with Ants!). There will also be a short talk about Bibliotherapy by Exeter City of Literature. For more information about the programme, please visit our events page.

Tags 19th Century, Illness and Society, Illness Narratives, Literary Studies, Medical Humanities

Articles Reviews

#MultilingualMedHums: A Thematic Series for The Polyphony

Post author By Katharine Murphy
Post date 20/03/2024
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By Dr Jordan McCullough, Associate Editor at The Polyphony and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland

Established in 2023, The Polyphony’s ‘Multilingual MedHums’ series seeks to challenge ‘the Anglocentric nature of much medical humanities scholarship by showcasing the work of scholars based in and working on non-anglophone countries.’[1] The series encourages readers and contributors to engage with the rich entanglement of language and culture, as the media through which health and illness are lived and communicated, and to reflect on the significance of this intersection for their own research agendas and those of the wider field. Following the recent trajectory of other multilingual scholarship in the field, calling us in the direction of a global Medical Humanities,[2] the series seeks to push beyond the boundaries of the Anglosphere; introduce new research trajectories developing across the world; and demonstrate the value of multilingual and translational approaches for the future of the Medical Humanities. The ‘Multilingual MedHums’ series thus resonates with the ‘Reading Bodies’ project on multiple levels.

Tags 21st Century, Healthcare, Illness and Society, Literary Studies, Medical Humanities, Multilingualism, Translation

News

Reading Bodies Research Network

Post author By Katharine Murphy
Post date 29/02/2024
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The Reading Bodies Research Network has met regularly since November 2023 to discuss our project research questions, updates on our chosen topics, and development of shared interests which are grouped into 3 themes: gender and the body; society, illness and representation; transnational and decolonial perspectives. For more information, please visit our Network and People pages.

Tags 19th Century, Illness and Gender, Illness and Society, Illness Narratives, Literary Studies

Articles

The ‘Sick Girl’ Film and Italian Teen Female Audiences

Post author By Katharine Murphy
Post date 09/02/2024
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By Danielle Hipkins, Professor of Italian Studies and Film, University of Exeter

Drawing connections with the AHRC-funded project A Girl’s Eye View 2021-2024, Prof. Danielle Hipkins reflects on audience responses to the genre of the ‘sick girl’ film.

The romantic film depends on the obstacle. Otherwise, what happens? Two people meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after. That is the outcome we want, but it’s not the story we want. It’s far too short, and likely boring.

Serious, terminal even, illness presents a narratively rich obstacle, and the canon of romantic films is strewn with lovers lost, slowly and painfully, or sometimes recovered through the sheer power of love alone. There are variations in outcome, and also in the distribution of illness: maybe he’s ill, maybe she’s ill, maybe they’re both ill. Sometimes they both survive, but usually it’s just one of them.

Tags 21st Century, Film Studies, Illness and Gender, Illness and Society, Italian Studies, Medical Humanities, Visual Art

Articles

Considering Female Mental Illness in Novas Cartas Portuguesas (1972): The Hysterical Woman and her Dog

Post author By Olivia Glaze
Post date 01/02/2024
No Comments on Considering Female Mental Illness in Novas Cartas Portuguesas (1972): The Hysterical Woman and her Dog

By Dr Olivia Glaze, AHRC Post-Doctoral Research Associate, University of Exeter

References to madness, insanity, melancholia, and hysteria have long plagued the diagnoses of female mental illness. The crazed, raving, and unstable woman is a prevalent trope that has long persisted within Western literature, from Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599-1601) and Bertha Mason in Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) to Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856). Historically, madness, hysteria, and melancholia have been considered female afflictions due to an assumed inherent feminine proximity to wrecked nerves and sexual disorders – indeed, the word hysteria is derived from the Greek word “hysteron” or womb. In the late nineteenth century, understanding the ‘female’ illness of hysteria was a central focus of studies, led by the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot at his infamous Parisian asylum, Salpêtrière. Charcot transformed the hospital into an internationally renowned site of neurological teaching, with Sigmund Freud and Pierre Janet amongst his students.

Tags 20th Century, Illness and Gender, Illness and Society, Literary Studies, Medical Humanities, Mental Illness, Portuguese Studies, Revolution