Call for Projects: Special Issue on Race, Health, and Medicine

Guest editors: Kim Gallon (Purdue University) and Kirsten Ostherr (Rice University)

Deadline: July 22, 2021

Race, Racism, and Health is a critical area in medical and health humanities that considers the historical development of racism and its effects on medical knowledge; access to care and treatment; and definitions of illness, health and wellness. In recent years, technology has further exposed not only linkages between structural racism, violence, and health outcomes but also the role technology plays in human-centered design in healthcare. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought many of these issues to the forefront once again and inspires critical questions:

• How can computational methods combined with humanistic inquiry offer transformative understandings of the relationship between race, racism, and health?

• What are the sources, processes, and presentation decisions that define a digital humanities project on race, racism, and health, and what specific parameters and functionalities are applied?

• How can the impact of digital technologies on humanities research methods and approaches foster new theoretical frameworks and research techniques in race, racism and health?

• How can humanities methods and perspectives shape new approaches to race and racism within medical and health settings?

We invite submissions from scholars, artists, community-based organizations, healthcare professionals, and others who use digital tools and humanities methods to address the intersections of race, medicine, and health, especially those with projects that use digital tools to intervene in or provide resources related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are particularly interested in projects on COVID-19 and intersecting crises (e.g. racial justice, voter suppression, anti-Asian hate, and white nationalism).

In addition to the above-mentioned topics, we invite projects related to any aspect of health, medicine, and race in the digital humanities: practical experimentation, theorizing, cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary work, and new and relevant developments. Submissions are welcome from projects at all stages, with a minimal requirement that the project have a publicly viewable website that demonstrates the central methods and concerns of the project.

Submission Details

Please send the following information to [email protected] with “SI: RHM” in the subject line:

• The title and website URL for the project;

• Project director’s name, institutional affiliation, email address, and brief bio; and

• 100-word abstract for the project.

If your project is selected for inclusion in the special issue by the guest editors, you will be invited to contribute your project overview as part of the journal’s review process. If your project is not selected for the special issue, it may be invited for inclusion in another issue of the journal by the journal editors.