Date of Award
2024
Document Type
Honors Thesis (Open Access)
Department
Colby College. Science, Technology and Society Program
Advisor(s)
Ashton Wesner
Second Advisor
Jay Sibara
Abstract
Illness memoirs with first-person point of view have gained more attention in recent years among medical sociologists and anthropologists. Different from traditional “case histories”written by doctors that are in danger of ignoring patients’ voices, autopathograhical works delineate narrators’ transformative experiences of persons to patients, emphasizing the importance of gaining social understanding of illness. Focusing on three works within the category of autopathography across genres and media forms in the late 1950s and contemporary periods, The Cancer Journals (1980) written by Audre Lorde, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019) written by Esmé Weijun Wang, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) directed by Julian Schnabel, this project will explore the material and symbolic significance of integrating the experience of disease with self identities. The comparison of these three works in their use of thematic and generic elements will enrich the definition of autopathography as well as highlight its unique narrative form. Drawing connections to the clinical terminologies and treatments of different types of illness, this project attempts to gain a more comprehensive understanding of diseases considering suffer-survivors’ experiences in regard to their interactions with social and cultural norms.
Keywords
autobiography; illness memoir; identity; selfhood; trauma; media specificity; disease
Recommended Citation
Shen, He (Kristen), "Autopathography Across Media: Trauma and Fluid Embodied Subjectivity" (2024). Honors Theses. Paper 1443.https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/1443
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