On Medical Humanities Blog

First things first: I passed my dissertation defense.  Assuming I manage to meet the requisite deadlines and get the necessary paperwork completed -- admittedly unsafe assumptions -- I will graduate in August of 2009 with a Ph.D in medical humanities.

Second, I mentioned that changes were afoot at MH Blog.  These changes will not be instituted all at once because, frankly, I don't have the time to do so.  Once I defended, the six projects I had put on hold to concentrate on the defense demanded my immediate attention, and so I have been preoccupied with their requirements. 

There will, however, be changes to MH Blog, and I plan to gradually phase them in over the next few months.  What can readers expect?

When I began this weblog in September 2006, I consciously modeled the format over Larry Solum's wonderful Legal Theory Blog.  Though the quality of the blogging over there puts most of the rest of us to shame, this blog has evolved into something quite different from Larry's masterpiece.  For example, the literature metacrawlers have become much less thorough and less formal, for a number of reasons, mostly pertaining to the enormous scope of interdisciplinary scholarship relevant to the medical humanities (and concomitant resource limitations).

I still enjoy highlighting recently published or forthcoming work that strikes me as important to the medical humanities, and therein is the key to understanding the changes that will come to MH Blog: they will all revolve around me.

Self-deprecating jabs at my own narcissism aside for the moment, MH Blog has never formally been a record of my own academic pursuits and interests.  Over time, the functional separation I tried to maintain between my own work and what I deemed important to the medical humanities eroded, if it was ever perceptible to begin with.  Indeed, as I've noted, no student of the medical humanities can with a straight face maintain the existence of an ontological separation between the subject and the object of investigation (for more on why, read Montaigne).

Therefore, all of the changes at MH Blog will reflect my desire to formally collapse this attempted separation entirely.  MH Blog will, in relatively short order, become intimately connected with my own work and scholarship.  These connections to a greater or lesser extent have already been obvious to the able reader, but I intend to make them more consistent and even more transparent. 

 

This should not result in any dramatic and immediate alterations in the style, the substance, or the format of the posts; but I expect and hope that the differences in how I intend to blog about my work and the medical humanities will emerge from the posts themselves, as any good piece of interdisciplinary work ought to demonstrate.

 

In short, it is as just as Montaigne, who remains the patron saint of MH Blog, says in the emblazoned quotation: It is myself that I paint.

Comments

[Maria A. Basile, M.D.]

Congratulations, Daniel! What an accomplishment. You are an inspiration to us all. By the way, while you are reworking MH Blog, I would love if you could revise the link you have on your sidebar for the Institute for Medicine in Society (SUNY StonyBrook), which is undergoing a huge transformation, and is now called The Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics. I know...pretty unweildy name, but we needed the big name where some of our biggest ideas could live. The new website is http://www.stonybrook.edu/bioethics. Come up and see us sometime!

[Daniel S. Goldberg]

Maria,

Inspiration, schminspiration! But thanks so much for the kind words.

I revised the link to the Center at SUNY StonyBrook . . . one of my reworking tasks is to go through the links, adding and revising, so having you provide this information up front is extremely helpful.

I like the new name very much, and as far as visiting, be careful what you wish for!

[Sam Whittle]

As a frequent, but quiet, reader (I prefer to avoid the term 'lurker', which has a sinister sense to it), I'd like to congratulate you on your achievements, both academic and blogic (I'd also like to claim ownership of the neologism 'blogic'). Having failed to complete a PhD following my specialty training in Rheumatology, I am filled with admiration for anyone who manages to survive the process. A subsequent change in direction has led me undertake a Masters degree in epidemiology (hopefully complete at the end of this year); it has only relatively recently dawned on me that medical humanities sits at the intersection of my interests in rheumatology, chronic pain, epidemiology and ethics. Your blog has been an invaluable resource, and a source of much pleasure, as this realization has evolved. So, thank you, and I look forward to watching as your blog continues its evolution.

[Daniel S. Goldberg]

Sam,

Ownership granted, though I have no sanction for conferring IP on anyone . . .

Rheumatology, chronic pain, epi, and ethics -- please do continue to lurk and comment, as these topics are near and dear to my heart. In fact, there is a wonderful rheumatology collection in a local medical library, so I am hoping to move into some historical work there, building off of my work in pain.

In any case, thank you for reading, and for the kind words.