Digital Post by Yirby Game Development If I had to describe “HLTD54 (Fall 2019)” and my experience in it, I would say it was unconventional. Conventional implies some semblance of normalcy, and I think my understanding of the academic world kind of got flipped on its head. From the get-go, I was presented with… Read More
This digital storytelling project might have changed my perspective on my life. As my final project illustrates, I had always seen my asthma as a burden on my life; however, I fought this feeling and decided to try boxing this year to test to see if my feeling was right or wrong. I had this… Read More
Digital Post by Penny Locke Over the last 12 weeks in HLTD54H3, I had the opportunity to learn about health and illness as they intersect with Toronto, Ontario, but more specifically, Scarborough; the place and space where I was born, raised and currently live in. This seminar provided me with deeper insights to health and… Read More
Digital Post by Katana Rider I can’t believe the semester is over. I started HLTD54 with my program advisor surprised that a student with a biomedical background was taking a health humanities D level course. Through my years in UofT Scarborough, I took many science and statistic related courses that gave me a specific definition… Read More
Digital post by Wonder Woman Rebecca Garden’s article “Whom Speaks for Whom” (2015) argues that health humanities seeks to advocate for underrepresented patients, those whose illness experiences are often overlooked. She expresses while representation in health humanities is a well-intentioned way of attempting to give voice to such patients, it may also, in turn, reinforce stigma.… Read More
Podcast by Yirby In this podcast, Yirby describes how reading Catherine Hernandez’s novel Scarborough might help reveal shared elements of illness writing in other surprising texts, like Full Metal Alchemist. Take a listen here:… Read More
Digital Post by Ally_EdwardSaid I believe that creative storytelling, such as through movies, poems, digital stories and so on, has the potential to re-enchant our lives, and in doing so, helps us better manage our sadness and suffering. I will use Arthur Frank’s concept of the quest narrative to explore Daniel Tysdal’s lived experience… Read More
Digital Post by Zai (As in Frank’s borrowed narratives and Something Borrowed, a tradition in weddings that is said to symbolize borrowed happiness) Daniel Tysdal’s essay, TIFF is more to me than a film festival, explores how film can be an immersive experience for those who experience mental illnesses. In Tysdal’s own experience, movies… Read More
Digital post by Yirby Content warning: death, suicide In his book, The Wounded Storyteller, Arthur Frank introduces three narrative types used to describe illness. Put briefly, restitution narratives look at illness as something to be cured, chaos narratives imagine illness as something that never gets better, and quest narratives are ones that accept illness… Read More
Blog post by Katana Rider The creative text by Laura Shepherd, “Forgiving the Future,” published in GUTS Magazine (2016) was a great connection and exemplar for one of Arthur Frank’s narrative he discusses in The Wounded Storyteller. The most intriguing aspect of this creative text is possibly the image that Shepherd used; which I understood… Read More