Medical Humanities and Disability Studies: In/Disciplines - Critical Interventions in the Medical and Health Humanities

Medical Humanities and Disability Studies are two critical fields at the cutting edge of innovative interdisciplinary work in the Arts and Humanities, but to date there has been no book length study of the (occasionally vexed) relationship between the two. This book addresses that and presents a series of provocative arguments about how the two disciplines interact, the forms their critical practice take, and what each can learn from the other.

Although the two disciplines have emerged from different critical heritages they share many features, from identifying processes of exclusion and championing user participation to a commitment to inter- and cross-disciplinary methodologies. But the subjects differ in other ways: medical humanities has evolved from considerations of the place of humanities in the development of medical education, while disability studies has its origins in rights- and identity-based discourses. While both are part of the 'critical turn' that has marked new interdisciplinary work in the last 15 years, each has developed through different theoretical contexts and often brings different perspectives to its subject material.

Written in an accessible manner and aimed at a wide audience in both fields and the new humanities more widely, it asserts that both subject areas need to evaluate their recent successes and challenge core assumptions if they are to remain critically relevant in the evolving study of social and cultural experiences of health.