Medical Humanity and Inhumanity in the German-Speaking World (Fringe) - Softcover

Mererid Puw Davies

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1787357724 ISBN 13: 9781787357723

Publisher: UCL Press, 2020

Synopsis

Medical Humanity and Inhumanity in the German-Speaking World is the first volume dedicated to exploring the interface of medicine, the human and the humane in the German-speaking lands.

The volume tracks the designation and making through medicine of the human and inhuman, and the humane and inhumane, from the Middle Ages to the present day. Eight individual chapters undertake explorations into ways in which theories and practices of medicine in the German-speaking world have come to define the human, and highlight how such theories and practices have consolidated, or undermined, notions of humane behaviour. Cultural analysis is central to this investigation, foregrounding the reflection, refraction and indeed creation of these theories and practices in literature, life-writing and other discourses and media.

Contributors bring to bear perspectives from literary studies, film studies, critical theory, cultural studies, history, and the history of medicine and psychiatry. Thus, this collection is historical in the most expansive sense, for it debates not only what historical accounts bring to our understanding of this topic. It encompasses too investigation of life-writing, documentary, and theory and literary works to bring to light elusive, paradoxical, underexplored yet vital issues in history and culture.

About this title

About the Authors

Mererid Puw Davies is Professor of German Studies at UCL.

Sonu Shamdasani is Vice-Dean (International) of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and Co-Director of the UCL Health Humanities Centre. He works on the history of psychology and psychiatry. His research follows two intersecting vertices: the reconstruction of the formation of modern psychological disciplines and therapeutics from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, and a reconstruction of the formation of work of Jung, based on primary archival materials. He has written six monographs and edited six volumes, which have together been translated into more than 20 languages.

Edition details

• Publisher: UCL Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1787357724
• ISBN 13: 9781787357723
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240
• Editor: Mererid Puw Davies, Sonu Shamdasani