“Illness Narratives: Towards a Gendered Health(care) Awareness" (INGH)

Funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (2025-2028).

Reference: PID2024-155270NB-I00.

Medical Humanities (MH) is an interdisciplinary area of knowledge that examines human health, physical and mental maladies, and the personal experience of being ill, as reflected in literature and other artistic expressions. After our project Gender and Pathography from a Transnational Perspective (202124), the research group Gender Studies in English-Speaking Countries from U. Complutense de Madrid (UCM) envisions to continue its consolidated expertise in the disciplines of MH, gender, and literary studies to further explore stories of illness, or (auto)pathographies, thanks to this new project proposed for 202427.
The members of the research team are professors of English Studies at UCM, U. Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), and U. de Valencia (UV). To strengthen the biomedical, literary, and international dimensions required for such a project, this group is supervised by renowned advisors from U. of Oklahoma, U. of Basel, and the Medical School at UCM, and by Dr. Siri Hustvedt, Princess of Asturias Award in Literature (2019). We plan to continue investigating how (auto)pathographies complement patients medical histories, reflect health(care) precarities, and denounce gender-related injustices by the medical profession and global health systems.
Yet, this projects overall hypothesis and the novelty of its approach lies in how illness stories, studied through the lens of MH, are not always confrontational in doctor-patient relationships but, instead, have the potential to enhance medical competence, ethics, and empathy, and serve to improve medical students education and healthcare professionals daily practice (the teaching art) while, simultaneously, becoming a curative scriptotherapy for their writer-patients (the healing art). Beyond the restorative function inherent in the act of life writing, (auto)pathographies also build a community of illness sufferersthe authors and their intended readerswhich facilitates physical/mental recovery from their conditions and effectively advocates for patient rights.
To enable the scrutiny of (auto)pathographies in conjunction with gender and its associated intersectional variables, such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic factors, research by the two main researchers (IPs) and the other members of the project is divided into three thematic clusters: stories of the body, of the mind and of the sexual in relation to illness. Ultimately, this projects formative mission intends to disseminate its research results among current and future health professionals to contribute to humanizing their theoretical-practical biomedical approach to illness, optimize their encounters with patients, and ensure quality clinical care and healthy lives.