The Health Humanities in German Studies
Will be published approx. on 25. June 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
464 pages
978-1-350-29619-0 (ISBN)
Description
The first full-length study to bring together the fields of Health Humanities and German studies, this book features contributions from a range of key scholars and provides an overview of the latest work being done at the intersection of these two disciplines. In addition to surveying the current critical terrain in unparalleled depth, it also explores future directions that these fields may take.
Organized around seven sections representing key areas of focus for both disciplines, this book provides important new insights into the intersections between Health Humanities, German Studies, and other fields of inquiry that have been gaining prominence over the past decade in academic and public discourse. In their contributions, the authors engage with disability studies, critical race studies, gender/embodiment studies, trauma studies, as well as animal/environmental studies.
Organized around seven sections representing key areas of focus for both disciplines, this book provides important new insights into the intersections between Health Humanities, German Studies, and other fields of inquiry that have been gaining prominence over the past decade in academic and public discourse. In their contributions, the authors engage with disability studies, critical race studies, gender/embodiment studies, trauma studies, as well as animal/environmental studies.
Reviews / Votes
This book is as innovative as promised and will start to fill a yawning chasm of interest. The time for health humanities in German Studies is now. * Kristen Ann Ehrenberger, Assistant Professor of Medicine & Pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, USA *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
10 bw illus
Dimensions
Height: 246 mm
Width: 189 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
821 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-29619-0 (9781350296190)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Stephanie M. Hilger is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA), where she also holds an appointment in the Carle Illinois College of Medicine.
Content
Foreword
Stefani Engelstein
Boundaries and Interdisciplines: Where Health Humanities Meets Literature & Science in German Studies
Introduction
Stephanie M. Hilger
Intersections: Health Humanities and German Studies
PART I: Medical Readings/Reading Medicine
Katharina Fuerholzer
"Verschlungen sitze ich / neben der Sprache:" Aphasic Poetry between Medicine and Metaphor
Anita Wohlmann and Katharina Bahlmann
The Totality Trap of Reading Illness: Unica Zuern's The House of Illnesses
Amanda Sheffer
Dr. Max Liebermann's Vienna: Diagnosis, Gender, and Criminality in Historical Crime Fiction
Madalina Meirosu
Teaching "Outbreak Narratives" during the COVID Pandemic
PART II: Graphic Medicine
Marina Rauchenbacher
Comics from the German-Language Realm and Health Humanities: An Overview
Katja Herges
Disability and Embodiment in Contemporary German Comics
Priscilla Layne
Drawing on Pain: Depicting Disability and Trauma in Mikael Ross' Graphic Novel Der Umfall
Elizabeth Nijdam
"Thinking in Comics:" Representing Autism Spectrum Disorder in Autobiographical Graphic Narrative
PART III: Disability
Anne Waldschmidt
Disability = Behinderung? The Conceptual History of a Social Category in Germany from a Disability Studies Perspective
Heidi Hausse
A New View of an Old Prosthesis: Creating a Digital 3D Model of a Sixteenth-Century Iron Hand
Heike Bartel
Rewriting Illness from the Turkish German Margins: Eating Disorders in Narratives by Renan Demirkan and Yade Yasemin OEnder
Alec Cattell
Teaching at the Intersection of German Studies and Disability Studies
PART IV: Race
Gabi Kathoefer
Work, Disability, Race: Toward an Intersectional, "Unsettling" Analysis of German Settler Colonialism
Julia Roos
The Post-1945 Eugenics Consensus and the Persecution of Germans of Color in the Third Reich: A Legal Case Study
Heikki Lempa
Tea, Race, and Ethnicity: Medical Knowledge of the Others in the German Lands, 1700-1830
PART V: Gender
Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio
Suspicious Body Parts and Endangered Femininity: Western Medical Knowledge about Female Genitalia and Practices of Genital Cutting in the Early Modern Age
Benjamin R. Davis
Establishing a New Order?: Queer Performativity, Embodied Precarity, and the Pathologization of the Transgressive Body in Melusine (1456) and Fortunatus (1509)
Joela Jacobs and Bastian Lasse
Making Intersex Identity ILLegible: Oskar Panizza's "Ein scandaloeser Fall"
Necia Chronister
Reading as a Trans-Corporeal Act
PART VI: Trauma
Eleoma Bodammer
Death by Despair: Destroying Health in Schiller's Die Raeuber
Allison Schmidt
The Bodies Kept the Score: Two Case Studies on Health and Violence after the Great War
Anke Pinkert
Refracting War Violence: Psychiatric Discourse in the Soviet Occupation Zone
and the Early East German State
PART VII: Animals and the Environment
Brian McInnis
The Animals among Humankind: Fables of Reason in Johann August Unzer's Medical Weekly Der Arzt
Nicole Thesz
Dangerous Bodies: Witches in German Fairy Tales and the Literary Imagination
Davina Hoell
"Vollkommene Organismen:" The Beginnings of a Literary Imagination of the Microbiome
Stefani Engelstein
Boundaries and Interdisciplines: Where Health Humanities Meets Literature & Science in German Studies
Introduction
Stephanie M. Hilger
Intersections: Health Humanities and German Studies
PART I: Medical Readings/Reading Medicine
Katharina Fuerholzer
"Verschlungen sitze ich / neben der Sprache:" Aphasic Poetry between Medicine and Metaphor
Anita Wohlmann and Katharina Bahlmann
The Totality Trap of Reading Illness: Unica Zuern's The House of Illnesses
Amanda Sheffer
Dr. Max Liebermann's Vienna: Diagnosis, Gender, and Criminality in Historical Crime Fiction
Madalina Meirosu
Teaching "Outbreak Narratives" during the COVID Pandemic
PART II: Graphic Medicine
Marina Rauchenbacher
Comics from the German-Language Realm and Health Humanities: An Overview
Katja Herges
Disability and Embodiment in Contemporary German Comics
Priscilla Layne
Drawing on Pain: Depicting Disability and Trauma in Mikael Ross' Graphic Novel Der Umfall
Elizabeth Nijdam
"Thinking in Comics:" Representing Autism Spectrum Disorder in Autobiographical Graphic Narrative
PART III: Disability
Anne Waldschmidt
Disability = Behinderung? The Conceptual History of a Social Category in Germany from a Disability Studies Perspective
Heidi Hausse
A New View of an Old Prosthesis: Creating a Digital 3D Model of a Sixteenth-Century Iron Hand
Heike Bartel
Rewriting Illness from the Turkish German Margins: Eating Disorders in Narratives by Renan Demirkan and Yade Yasemin OEnder
Alec Cattell
Teaching at the Intersection of German Studies and Disability Studies
PART IV: Race
Gabi Kathoefer
Work, Disability, Race: Toward an Intersectional, "Unsettling" Analysis of German Settler Colonialism
Julia Roos
The Post-1945 Eugenics Consensus and the Persecution of Germans of Color in the Third Reich: A Legal Case Study
Heikki Lempa
Tea, Race, and Ethnicity: Medical Knowledge of the Others in the German Lands, 1700-1830
PART V: Gender
Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio
Suspicious Body Parts and Endangered Femininity: Western Medical Knowledge about Female Genitalia and Practices of Genital Cutting in the Early Modern Age
Benjamin R. Davis
Establishing a New Order?: Queer Performativity, Embodied Precarity, and the Pathologization of the Transgressive Body in Melusine (1456) and Fortunatus (1509)
Joela Jacobs and Bastian Lasse
Making Intersex Identity ILLegible: Oskar Panizza's "Ein scandaloeser Fall"
Necia Chronister
Reading as a Trans-Corporeal Act
PART VI: Trauma
Eleoma Bodammer
Death by Despair: Destroying Health in Schiller's Die Raeuber
Allison Schmidt
The Bodies Kept the Score: Two Case Studies on Health and Violence after the Great War
Anke Pinkert
Refracting War Violence: Psychiatric Discourse in the Soviet Occupation Zone
and the Early East German State
PART VII: Animals and the Environment
Brian McInnis
The Animals among Humankind: Fables of Reason in Johann August Unzer's Medical Weekly Der Arzt
Nicole Thesz
Dangerous Bodies: Witches in German Fairy Tales and the Literary Imagination
Davina Hoell
"Vollkommene Organismen:" The Beginnings of a Literary Imagination of the Microbiome