CfP: Pain and its Paradoxes
BMJ Medical Humanities will host a special issue on PAIN in June 2018.
Title: Pain and its Paradoxes
Abstract Deadline: August 1, 2017
Final Submission Deadline: October 1, 2017 (publication date June 2018)
Pain is almost certainly the most common illness experience on the
planet. Yet, it is frequently treated poorly, and those who experience
pain often endure skepticism, doubt, and stigma for their condition. In
most places around the world, pain closely tracks social power
structures, which means that marginalized groups are both more likely to
experience pain, and are more likely to have it regarded dubiously and
treated inadequately.
Moreover, while pain is a near-universal part of the human condition,
it remains difficult to define and conceptualize. As Emily Dickinson
famously noted, pain has an element of blank. And while pain and
suffering are often experienced together, they remain distinct
phenomena: some people in pain do not suffer, and some people who suffer
state that they are not in pain. Pain is an essential pathway to
redemption for many, and for others it exists only as a devastating,
hollowing experience that defies meaning. In short, the paradoxes of
pain are multiple, varied, and slippery. While pain has not escaped
scholarly attention in the medical and health humanities over the last
decade, current and inequitable burdens of global pain alone justify
sustained focus and analysis. Accordingly, the Special Issue of Medical
Humanities on “Pain and its Paradoxes” aims to integrate critical and
rigorous scholarship (peer reviewed) addressing the lived experiences of
pain, past, present, and future. Specifically, we invite manuscripts
on subjects including but not limited to
- The nature and concept of pain;
- The history of pain;
- The phenomenology of pain;
- Narratives of pain;
- The relationship between pain and suffering;
- Pain as an emotional experience (including the history of pain as emotional experience);
- Pain and anxiety;
- Pain and sympathy;
- Pain and grief;
- Pain and inequalities (race, gender, class, age, disability status, etc.);
- Pain and disability;
- Pain and stigma;
- Pain and pharmaceuticals, including but not limited to opioids
The editors are especially interested in manuscripts considering pain from non-Western contexts.
Interested contributors should send an abstract to EIC Brandy Schillace (bls10@case.edu) and Guest Editor Daniel Goldberg (daniel.goldberg@ucdenver.edu) no later than August 1, 2017.
Final submissions should be submitted to the BMJ Medical Humanities
online ScholarOne system, choosing the category Special Issue: Pain and
it’s Paradoxes by October 1, 2017. All contributions will be subject to rigorous peer review.