Advancing Medical Posthumanism Through Twenty-First Century American Poetry

Advancing Medical Posthumanism Through Twenty-First Century American Poetry places contemporary poetics in dialogue with posthumanism and biomedicine in order to create a framework for advancing a posthuman-affirmative ethics within the culture of medical practice. This book makes a case for a posthumanist understanding of the body—one that sees health and illness not as properties possessed by individual bodies, but as processes that connect bodies to their social and natural environment, shaping their capacity to act, think, and feel. Tana Jean Welch demonstrates how contemporary American poetry is specifically poised to develop a pathway toward a posthuman intervention in biomedicine, the field of medical humanities, medical discourse, and the value systems that guide U.S. healthcare in general. Tana Jean Welch is a poet and scholar of medical humanities and contemporary American poetry. She is Associate Professor of Medical Humanities at the Florida State University College of Medicine where she teaches courses in literature, writing, and humanities and serves as Director of the Chapman Humanities and Arts in Medicine Program. Her critical work has been published in MELUS, The Journal of Ecocriticism, Literature and Medicine, and Academic Medicine. She is also the author of the poetry collections In Parachutes Descending (2024) and Latest Volcano (2016).