The health humanities is a rapidly rising field, advancing an inclusive, democratizing, activist, applied, critical, and culturally diverse approach to delivering health and well-being through the arts and humanities. It has generated new kinds of interdisciplinary research, knowledge, and communities of practice globally. It has also acted to bring greater coherence and political force to contributions across a range of related disciplines and traditions.

In this volume, a formidable set of authors explore the history, current state, and future of the health humanities, in particular how its vision of the arts and humanities:

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• Promotes creative public health.
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• Opens new routes to health and well-being.
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• Informs and drives better health care.
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• Interrogates relationships between ill health and social equality.
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• Develops humanist theory in relation to health and social care practice.
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• Foregrounds cultural difference as a resource for positive change in society.
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• Tests the humanity of an increasingly globalized health-care system.
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• Looks to overcome structural and process obstacles to cross-disciplinary ventures.
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• Champions co-construction, co-design, and mutuality in solving health and well-being challenges.
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• Showcases less familiar, prominent, or celebrated creative practices.
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• Includes multiple perspectives on the value and health benefits of the arts and humanities not limited to or dominated by medicine.
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Divided into two main sections, the Companion looks at "Reflections and Critical Perspectives," offering current thinking and definitions within health humanities, and "Applications," comprising a wide selection of applied arts and humanities practices from comedy, writing, and dancing to yoga, cooking, and horticultural display.

About the Author

Paul Crawford is Professor of Health Humanities in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham, UK.

Brian Brown is Professor of Health Communication at De Montfort University, UK.

Andrea Charise is an Assistant Professor in the departments of English and Interdisciplinary Centre for Health and Society at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada.

Reviews

"The book is a cornucopia of riches: a repository of perspectives and practices which provoke and inspire."

Stephen Clift Professor Emeritus, Canterbury Christchurch University, United Kingdom

Book Information
ISBN 9781032570341
Author Paul Crawford
Format Paperback
Page Count 492
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 907g