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SDG: 3
Sustainable Development Goals Series Good Health and Well-Being
Health Humanities in
Application
Edited by
Christian Riegel
Katherine M. Robinson
Sustainable Development Goals Series
The Sustainable Development Goals Series is Springer Nature’s inaugu-
ral cross-imprint book series that addresses and supports the United
Nations’ seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. The series fosters
comprehensive research focused on these global targets and endeavours to
address some of society’s greatest grand challenges. The SDGs are inher-
ently multidisciplinary, and they bring people working across different
fields together and working towards a common goal. In this spirit, the
Sustainable Development Goals series is the first at Springer Nature to
publish books under both the Springer and Palgrave Macmillan imprints,
bringing the strengths of our imprints together.
The Sustainable Development Goals Series is organized into eighteen
subseries: one subseries based around each of the seventeen respective
Sustainable Development Goals, and an eighteenth subseries, “Connecting
the Goals,” which serves as a home for volumes addressing multiple goals
or studying the SDGs as a whole. Each subseries is guided by an expert
Subseries Advisor with years or decades of experience studying and
addressing core components of their respective Goal.
The SDG Series has a remit as broad as the SDGs themselves, and con-
tributions are welcome from scientists, academics, policymakers, and
researchers working in fields related to any of the seventeen goals. If you
are interested in contributing a monograph or curated volume to the
series, please contact the Publishers: Zachary Romano [Springer; zachary.
romano@springer.com] and Rachael Ballard [Palgrave Macmillan; rachael.
ballard@palgrave.com].
Christian Riegel • Katherine M. Robinson
Editors
Health Humanities
in Application
Editors
Christian Riegel Katherine M. Robinson
Department of English Department of Psychology
Campion College, University Campion College, University
of Regina of Regina
Regina, SK, Canada Regina, SK, Canada
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Chapters 1 and 8 are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details
see licence information in the chapters.
Color wheel and icons: Fromwww.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/, Copyright © 2020
United Nations. Used with the permission of the United Nations.
The content of this publication has not been approved by the United Nations and does not
reflect the views of the United Nations or its officials or Member States.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
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publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
The editors thank the editorial staff at Palgrave Macmillan for their careful
preparation of the book: Allie Troyanos, Chandralekha Mahamel Raja,
Brian Halm, Imogen Higgins, and Sindhuja Aroumougame. Thanks also
to Molly Beck for the initial welcome response to our query.
v
Contents
1 Introduction:
What Does It Mean to Do the Health
Humanities in Application? 1
Christian Riegel and Katherine M. Robinson
2 Mapping
Reproductive Health Policy Using Arts-Based
Research Methods: A Model of Pedagogical Transgression 17
Angie Mejia and Danniella Balangoy
3 Black
Feminist Field Notes: On Designing an
Undergraduate, Online, Health Humanities Course in
Women’s and Gender Studies 43
Rachel Dudley
4 Viral
Pedagogical Narratives: Artistic Expressions of
Living During the COVID-19 Pandemic 75
Karen Keifer-Boyd, Michele Mekel, and Lauren Stetz
5 Narratives
of Repair and the Re-articulation of the Pained
Self: A Study in Painscapes103
Tea Gerbeza
vii
viii Contents
6 Exploring
Cultural Dance as a Medium for Improving
Cross-Cultural Communication in Medicine: The
Aseemkala Model123
Shilpa Darivemula, Moondil Jahan, Lindsay Winters, and Ruta
Sachin Uttarkar
7 Deep
Flow: A Tentacular Worlding of Embodied Dance
Practice, Knowing, and Healing153
Jeannette Ginslov
8 Interdisciplinarity,
Transdisciplinarity, and Health
Humanities: Eye Tracking, Ableism, Disability, and Art
Creation175
Christian Riegel and Katherine M. Robinson
9 Listen,
Play, Learn: Rethinking Expertise and
Collaboration in the Field of Disability Support Services195
Myles Himmelreich and Michelle Stewart
10 Deconstructing
Disability from a Global South
Perspective: Examples from an Interpretive
Phenomenological Study223
Festus Yaw Moasun
11 The
Networked Human: Coronavirus, Facebook, and
Indian Politics247
Rimi Nandy, Agnibha Banerjee, and Santosh Kumar
12 On
the Use of Encapsulation, Parity, and Visual
Storytelling in Graphic Medicine265
Spencer Barnes
13 Medical
Progress, Health, and the Chronic Disease of
Racism in Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation287
Tatiana Konrad
Index319
List of Figures
ix
x List of Figures
Fig. 13.7 Dana is being whipped by Tom Weylin (p. 162). Kindred: A
Graphic Novel Adaptation, by Octavia E. Butler, adapted by
Damian Duffy, illustrated by John Jennings (c) Abrams
ComicArts300
Fig. 13.8 Injured Alice is returned to the plantation (p. 136). Kindred:
A Graphic Novel Adaptation, by Octavia E. Butler, adapted
by Damian Duffy, illustrated by John Jennings (c) Abrams
ComicArts301
Fig. 13.9 Dana finds Alice’s dead body (p. 219). Kindred: A Graphic
Novel Adaptation, by Octavia E. Butler, adapted by Damian
Duffy, illustrated by John Jennings (c) Abrams ComicArts 302
Fig. 13.10 Dana is caring for severely injured Alice (p. 138). Kindred: A
Graphic Novel Adaptation, by Octavia E. Butler, adapted by
Damian Duffy, illustrated by John Jennings (c) Abrams
ComicArts304
Fig. 13.11 Dana’s kit includes aspirin (p. 107). Kindred: A Graphic
Novel Adaptation, by Octavia E. Butler, adapted by Damian
Duffy, illustrated by John Jennings (c) Abrams ComicArts 306
Fig. 13.12 Dana is giving aspirin to Rufus to ease his suffering (p. 126).
Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, by Octavia E. Butler,
adapted by Damian Duffy, illustrated by John Jennings (c)
Abrams ComicArts 307
Fig. 13.13 Dana steals a bottle of medicine to help Alice flee (p. 204).
Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, by Octavia E. Butler,
adapted by Damian Duffy, illustrated by John Jennings (c)
Abrams ComicArts 309
Fig. 13.14 The opening image of Dana (n.p.). Kindred: A Graphic Novel
Adaptation, by Octavia E. Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy,
illustrated by John Jennings (c) Abrams ComicArts 311
Fig. 13.15 Dana returns home from the antebellum South for the last
time (p. 234). Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, by
Octavia E. Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy, illustrated by
John Jennings (c) Abrams ComicArts 314
List of Tables
xiii
CHAPTER 1
C. Riegel (*)
Department of English, Campion College, University of Regina,
Regina, SK, Canada
e-mail: Christian.riegel@uregina.ca
K. M. Robinson
Department of Psychology, Campion College, University of Regina,
Regina, SK, Canada
e-mail: katherine.robinson@uregina.ca
recognition of others who exist with us in society and are thus in a form of
relation to them. It is one of the roles of the humanities to help us to
understand depths of this sense of relation to others, and it is the configu-
ration of health and humanities that applies ethical dimensions to that
relationship. When we encounter the health humanities in application we
can situate ourselves in just such an ethical position, opening ourselves to
recognition of the social, cultural, and historical complexity of health as it
affects individuals and societies. Consequently, this book is constructed to
bring to bear global considerations of health humanities, touching upon
North American, Indian, and African contexts in addition to its other
concerns.
The first three chapters, following this one, of Health Humanities in
Application are concerned with educational applications, focusing on
postsecondary contexts within which the intersections of arts and humani-
ties practices with health concerns prove fertile grounds with which to
catalyse student interest in their own well-being as well as with that of
society at large. In Chap. 2, Angie P. Mejia and Danniella Balangoy show
how undergraduate health sciences students can learn about the asymmet-
ric power structures in U.S. reproductive health policy through an applied
arts-based research methodology that involves intersectional analysis. The
application of intersectional theory in the classroom, they argue, serves to
challenge invisible privilege, as Mejia and Balangoy identify their own sub-
ject positions as “feminists of colour” to counter structures of oppressions
in their institutional contexts. Intersectional analysis is conjoined with per-
formance and reflective writing in the classroom as an arts-based research
process. Students were engaged in in-class role play performance and writ-
ing relating to state-based reproductive and sexual health legislation that
is restrictive that lead to learning relating to reproductive health, rights,
and justice, which is critical to training effective health practitioners.
Working also from a perspective grounded in intersectional feminism
and health justice, Rachel Dudley in Chap. 3 demonstrates that a feminist
health humanities approach offers applied opportunities to develop
impactful new courses in the health humanities. Knowledge of the devel-
opment of Dudley’s course, Feminist Health Humanities, shows how the
health humanities can serve a vital role in bringing awareness to students
of privilege, power, and oppression as they relate to social structures that
impact health and medicine. A key experience of developing the course is
recognition of how inseparable issues of health are from social and politi-
cal factors relating to oppression and inequality. The health humanities
1 INTRODUCTION: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO DO THE HEALTH… 9
References
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1 INTRODUCTION: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO DO THE HEALTH… 15
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction
in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original
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The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the
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right holder.
CHAPTER 2
Introduction
This chapter engages with “the magic of health humanities” (Crawford
2020, 3) with an applied approach that merges arts-based research meth-
ods and intersectional analysis to introduce undergraduate health sciences
students to the asymmetric power relations of U.S. reproductive health
policy. We affirm our commitment to what Charise termed the urgent task
of an applied health humanities praxis “infused with advocacy and alive to
activism” (2020, 25) to respond to the effects of neoliberalism on the
health and wellbeing of underserved populations. We concur with recent
A. Mejia (*)
Center of Learning Innovation, University of Minnesota Rochester, Rochester,
MN, USA
e-mail: amejiame@r.umn.edu
D. Balangoy
Farmington, MN, USA
e-mail: balan017@umn.edu
scholarly work that asserts a need to critically assess how the health human-
ities might be apolitically applied in clinical education to meet the market-
driven demands of healthcare institutions (Diedrich 2015; Fletcher and
Piemonte 2017; Charise 2020). By remaining vigilant about how we do
health humanities, we can more easily “talk back” (hooks 1989) and inter-
vene in practices and systems that marginalize subaltern groups’ health
conocimientos (wisdom and knowledge) and mute their transformative
potential. We enter this conversation with a pedagogical process that chal-
lenges university undergraduate students and others to critically examine
the role of U.S. reproductive health policy as a driver of inequities that
impact how health professionals engage in the clinical encounter.
The use of qualitative methods in health sciences and STEM (Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) classrooms has been referred
to as a “transgressive practice” (Hsiung 2016). We, as Women of Colour
(WoC) teaching (Mejia) and learning (Balangoy) at a Predominantly
White Institution (PWI) in the Midwestern United States, are also coded
as transgressors and trespassers. PWIs, institutions where Anglo Whites
make up over 50% of the student body (Von Robertson et al. 2016) and
whose practices, policies, and institutional ideologies have been shaped by
and entrenched in a legacy of racial segregation and exclusion (Allen 1985;
Hurtado 1992; Smedley et al. 1993; Apugo 2019), are in urgent need for
humanities-based and critically liberatory-inspired pedagogies that apply
an intersectional lens and praxis. Introducing controversial topics in aca-
demic settings is not always fruitful as “[i]t takes time for students to deal
with all the assaults on their ways of perceiving the world” (Bickford et al.
2001, 92). However, the pedagogical use of performative research meth-
ods might allow for the exploration of power, domination, and their inter-
sectional oppressions in accessible and transformative ways, for both
audience and learner (Cabaniss 2016; Tintiangco-Cubales et al. 2016).
This chapter presents a model and a qualitative analysis of an applied
health humanities assignment that used arts-based methods to introduce
health sciences undergraduates to the intersectional barriers connected to
reproductive health policy in the United States. We begin by outlining the
concepts driving our pedagogy as well as our analysis (intersectionality,
arts-based methods, performativity) and summary of key literature on
U.S. health providers’ knowledge about reproductive health policy. Then,
we go on to describe the assignment in more detail before delving into our
qualitative analysis of students’ written reflections on dramatizing the
intersectional consequences of restrictive reproductive health policy. We
2 MAPPING REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH POLICY USING ARTS-BASED… 19
Literature Review
Intersectionality
Intersectionality emerged from the work of Black feminist scholars
(Crenshaw 1990; Collins 2002; Combahee River Collective 2014) and
other Women of Colour thinkers, activists, and academics (Lugones 1987;
Hurtado 1989; Sandoval 1998; Moraga and Anzaldúa 2015). This con-
cept illustrates how socio-political markers of identity (race, gender, class,
ability, nationality, sexual desire, language, among others) and systems of
domination, power, and differentiation (such as racism, sexism, classism,
ableism, ethnocentrism, and others) work in complex and mutually consti-
tutive ways (Crenshaw 1990; Collins 2002) to shape and solidify inequities.
Expanding upon the theoretical and methodological possibilities of
intersectionality, Patricia Hill Collins (2002) proposed a sociological and
feminist-informed analytical framework to understand these complex and
mutually constitutive dynamics. Calling it a Matrix of Domination, Hill
Collins argues that power and domination operate at four dimensions to
organize social life: structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal
domains of power. Within the structural domain, power operates via laws,
legislations, and other larger, more abstract tools of power to organize
social oppression. Hill Collins sees the disciplinary domain as managing
oppression via institutional formations, such as schools, health systems,
workplaces, and other organizations, including governmental ones. The
hegemonic domain is connected to the power of culture, ideas, and social
norms to perpetuate oppression by normalizing untrue and damaging nar-
ratives about minoritized groups. The interpersonal domain within this
framework examines the power of everyday relations between people to
sustain and perpetuate the status quo.
Scholars have noted various challenges when teaching intersectionality
while proposing interventions in classrooms and other learning contexts.
A full discussion of these challenges and strategies developed to teach
intersectionality as an analytical framework is not the focus of this chapter.
However, we wish to highlight our commitment to meeting these provo-
cations by emphasizing Kim Case’s (2016) powerful words on the neces-
sity of intersectional teaching in the classroom of today:
20 A. MEJIA AND D. BALANGOY
Arts-Based Research
We use the term arts-based research (ABR) to conceptualize the integra-
tion of the arts and research as a dynamic “process of inquiry whereby the
researcher alone or with others, engages the making of art as a primary mode
of inquiry” (McNiff 2019, 24, as cited in McNiff, 2014, pp. 59, emphasis
in the original.) Practices under the umbrella of ABR act as “methodologi-
cal tools used by research across the disciplines during any or all phases of
research” (Leavy 2019, 4). By performance, we mean the way “research is
presented … for others” (Gergen and Gergen 2019, 54, emphasis in the
original). This definition takes into account the audience, what the
researchers wish to communicate to said audience, the researchers’ ratio-
nale in using the performance approach to share research findings, and the
myriad of ways audiences may respond or react to the knowledge com-
municated via the performance (de Carvalho Filho et al. 2020; Saypol
et al. 2015; Shapiro and Hunt 2003).
guidelines (Dodge et al. 2013). However, they were less confident in their
knowledge of parental notification and consent laws when a minor needs
an abortion and guidelines around state-mandated counselling before ter-
minating a pregnancy (Dodge et al. 2013).
Finally, we were guided by Ludlow’s argument (2008) on how repro-
ductive health experiences, such as abortion, are complex and multifaceted
issues that “extend beyond the limits of the [abortion] debate and thus
simultaneously embody “pro-life” and “pro-choice” values” (2008, 32).
Thus, the use of performance and reflection to educate audiences on the
real-life consequences of restrictive policy on historically oppressed and
institutionally underserved people would not position learners for right
versus wrong conversations. Instead, the focus would be on understand-
ing these laws’ socio-political outcomes on groups of people they may
soon interact with as health professionals.
In-Class Role-Play
The students will spend the whole session creating a role-play performance
using briefs developed by the Guttmacher Institute, a policy research
organization focused on advocating for reproductive health rights in the
United States and transnationally. These short summaries outline impor-
tant points and policy analyses on specific pieces of restrictive state-based
reproductive and sexual health legislation. Groups of four to six learners
are given a brief and asked to spend 20 minutes creating a dramatic scene
that portrays the real-life consequences for institutionally underserved and
marginalized individuals. The scene is meant to prime the audience (often
their peers and future colleagues) to reflect on the many barriers that
engender unequal health outcomes for different groups of people.
Collective discussion follows each performance. This exercise spans two
class sessions to give each group plenty of time to perform and lead the
conversation.
Written Portfolio
This part of the assignment requires students to individually research two
pieces of restrictive state-based reproductive and sexual health legislation.
To receive full points, the portfolio must include two written dramatic
scenes depicting the real-life consequences of said policies on marginalized
individuals. These scenes should be accompanied with instructions for the
facilitator and the performers and a list of questions for a post-performance
audience discussion. The portfolio also contains a 500-word memo out-
lining the researching and writing of the dramatic scenes and a 500-word
reflection exploring the student’s emotional responses and reactions.
Students could also integrate another artistic medium into the
24 A. MEJIA AND D. BALANGOY
Methods
We conducted a thematic qualitative analysis of the students’ written
reflections and our observational classroom notes. Reading through these
assignments, we began by creating a set of initial codes to find patterns
and common themes. By codes and coding, we mean textual data (via
words and phrases) being “symbolically assign[ed] a summative, salient,
essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute” (Saldaña 2021, 3). As
qualitative researchers, we created initial codes from reading the academic
literature on health providers’ reproductive health knowledge and per-
spectives, scholarship of teaching and learning in reproductive and sexual
health in the post-secondary classroom as well as those that “jumped out”
during our first reading (Seidman 2006). (For example, some of these
2 MAPPING REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH POLICY USING ARTS-BASED… 25
Findings
In addition to introducing methodological processes of reflexivity, data
collection, and dissemination (Lapum 2019) facilitated by an arts-based
exploration of controversial and difficult to discuss topics in the health sci-
ences, we found the assignment impacted students in various other ways.
The in-class exercise encouraged more productive conversations around
socially polarizing reproductive justice topics. Both the in-class role-play
and the written assignments helped students understand U.S. state-based
and federal reproductive health policy as related to their career aspirations.
Our analysis also demonstrated how the in-class exercise and the written
portfolio helped students more confidently distinguish the analytical
dimensions of intersectionality theory. We use presentative excerpts from
the students’ written reflections and ethnographic notes to illustrate these
findings.
Our findings suggest many students became more aware of state law’s
complexities when forced to analyse the many social implications for those
living in more restrictive states. Their knowledge of a specific reproductive
26 A. MEJIA AND D. BALANGOY
Prior to this exercise, I hadn’t thought about how much these policies could
influence patients, simply because I didn’t really know about these policies.
I knew that for myself, I had to have permission to be seen by a doctor from
my mom when I was a minor, though I hadn’t thought too much about
what would happen if someone couldn’t get permission… I was aware that
some doctors do not perform abortions, but I had never thought to think
about why this was. It honestly had not even occurred to me that this was
for personal reasons that they would do this. I think this activity was very eye
opening for me.
Some of the medications that are routinely used for abortions have other
uses such as treatment of miscarriages and chemotherapy. Requiring phar-
macies to complete additional paperwork for these medications would be
very difficult to do. Additionally, not all physicians include their reasoning
or diagnosis for prescriptions so the pharmacist would have to call every
physician they receive a prescription from taking more time from both the
pharmacist and physician.
Being in a school where all my peers are pursuing a career in healthcare and
science, I think that it is important to get an understanding of what the
world we are stepping into. I think that many of us cruise by our educational
career and don’t think about how policy changes can have an impact on the
careers we are pursuing. … [P]olicy changes impact not only our careers but
also our lives.
During our analysis of the written work and assessing of other class
products not connected to this exercise, we noticed some students devel-
oping a deeper understanding of intersectionality theory regarding the
differences between interpersonal and structural effects of oppression,
domination, and power. We use a segment from Mejia’s ethnographic
notes on an encounter outside class (below) to demonstrate how a student
verbalized her understanding of the analytical dimensions of Hill Collins’
Matrix of Domination:
28 A. MEJIA AND D. BALANGOY
S was excited to tell me that they finally “got” the “whole matrix thing.”
“What helped?” I asked. “Getting into the roles!” I remember this student’s
performance as the scared high schooler seeking permission from the courts
to get an abortion. They said that the dramatization and then writing other
scenes helped them think of how “the law affects the clinic and then all of
the people involved.” They remarked that the exercise made it much easier
to realize how “a hospital worker, the place where they work in, and the
people they care for are all connected to laws.” When legislation eventually
passes, they continued, it forces a “clinic to change how one goes about
patient care” even when “the people working there are not necessarily try-
ing to be racist.” I remarked that they got it; “it” meaning the chapter in
Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Feminist Thought, which some of my students
experienced as a moderately difficult read. (Field notes, 10 November 2019)
[P]olicymakers know that these populations will not have the money to pay
for an abortion out of pocket or two separate appointments with the time to
do so. This is a direct target towards these populations and is just one of the
racist acts of many within the laws set in place within our country.
Aside from pushing students to reflect on the blatant racism behind these
laws, the performance and written assignment allowed students to map out
the mechanics of this legislation on the ground. Just like the student above,
others spoke of the additional burdens, whether emotional or material, con-
nected to the implementation of restrictive reproductive health legislation.
2 MAPPING REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH POLICY USING ARTS-BASED… 29
This was evident after mapping out the inadequate care or lack of access for
someone living in a specific state.
Even if you are pro-life, it’s still important to know the laws that contradict
your beliefs. I didn’t know about the situation specific law being passed in
Wisconsin, but I knew that it was an option available. This is something that
everyone should know so that they can know the rights they have in
their state.
It’s easy to state your opinion without much thought after reading a pas-
sage about a certain issue, but it’s so different if you can actually experience
the feelings and emotions that are involved. As for me, someone who has a
certain set of rules and values that I was raised with, I have always had strong
opinions about issues like abortion and other issues. But using drama to
present the reality of not being able to decide what to do with your own
body is indeed terrifying and … [makes it] clearer to the audience what the
issue looks in real life and how serious it can get sometimes. Also, you can
try to picture yourself in place of the actors and decide what would you have
done if you were that person and this was all real.
removed the issue of racism and focused on developing scenes with very
unclear roles and outcomes. Their written reflection argued that “race is
not really an issue here, since it is an insurance issue” when referring to
Wisconsin’s legislation restricting state employees’ insurance coverage for
abortion services.
I chose the South Dakota law about the language of abortion, naming the
fetus as a human being, as I thought that it was very powerful. It seems that
this was in place to illicite [sic] a response in the patients being seen. I think
by having it be mandatory, would create more thought when in an abortion
situation. It personally doesn’t seem right to me that it takes language for
people to see that a fetus or baby is a human being or an eventual person,
but that is my own opinion. I think both policies can have massive effects on
those seeking these types of care, possibly negatively emotionally, but I think
one could argue that a decision that would alter a women’s [sic] life and the
potential life of another person, is massive in itself. In my scenes, I was try-
ing to show why these laws might have been planned or been supported. I
wanted to shed light on the positive side of them, rather than just a nega-
tive. … The language of the abortion scene was meant to show how power-
ful the language of the policy is. I thought that it was important for a person
going through with an abortion to hear the language of the fetus as a human
being and living person.
This student’s choice of “naming the fetus as a human being” and focus
on how the legislation works to emotionally influence a person seeking an
abortion exemplifies scholarly work on the power of restrictive abortion
laws in the United States. Ludlow, for example, argues that the language
used in these policies creates and solidifies “a discursive separation of a
32 A. MEJIA AND D. BALANGOY
foetus from the body that must sustain it… [where] the fetus becomes the
person (patient) and the pregnant woman becomes a ‘body’” (Ludlow
2008, 33). In the case of this future health professional, “the positive
side” of this particular law is connected to its moral power to dissuade
(and if we read more into their written reflection, to discipline) an already
distressed patient from asking for health services. Thus, the student that
developed this sociodrama scenario helped us envision how a small but
nevertheless influential group of future professionals may use the discur-
sive force of restrictive reproductive health law during their clinical
interactions.
Discussion
This chapter outlines an applied health humanities pedagogical model
about reproductive oppression via restrictive state laws in the United
States for health sciences undergraduates. Initially designed by the first
author to introduce how non-mainstream qualitative research approaches
are used to communicate health inequities and policy topics to others, this
activity positioned students to apply an intersectional analysis to another
inquiry area, the reproductive and sexual health arena. We believe this
applied health humanities exercise can help meet the needs of undergradu-
ates and engage other groups of health and medical professionals in trans-
formative conversations about controversial or complex topics. For
example, Jones (2001) demonstrates the value of using sociodrama to
nurture a space for providers “to recognize issues based on their own clini-
cal and personal experience,” which in turn might help them develop new
ways to deliver care (Jones 2001, 390).
An analysis of students’ written reflections on writing and performing
dramatic scenes for an audience, classroom observation notes, and stu-
dents’ written artefacts showed how using performance, reflection, and
other forms of artistic expression benefitted learners in additional ways.
First, it allowed undergraduates the opportunity to engage in a discussion
of a controversial topic without devolving into an either-or conversation.
Second, it helped focus on the effects of policy on their future careers by
assisting them to see the differences between state and federal laws and
their impact on racialized communities. Third, it provided students with
an exercise to explore intersectional barriers to health and how these bar-
riers look when taking contexts of power and domination into account.
Finally, it positioned students to wrestle with the complex relationship
2 MAPPING REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH POLICY USING ARTS-BASED… 33
between ideology and U.S. state law pertaining to health inequities at the
interpersonal level of power.
The use of performance and other arts-based pedagogical tools to
explore reproductive oppression at the structural level allowed students to
visualize difficult situations that they might encounter as providers at the
interpersonal level. As Lake et al. (2015) indicate, “utilising the arts to
provide a vehicle for critique of the dominant paradigms in medicine offers
a route to engagement and professional agency” (2015, 770) for future
healthcare professionals. Many of the assignments in this class illuminated
how the praxis at the intersections of dramatic performance and reflective
writing made students contemplate the additional consequences of restric-
tive reproductive health laws on their future professions, even when some
stated that they were not likely to find themselves working directly with
patients needing reproductive health services.
For many of the students, thinking intersectionally, developing, and
performing dramatic scenes depicting experiences under restrictive state
reproductive health policies put them in a state of cognitive disequilib-
rium. Kumagai and Wear (2014), when reflecting on the role of the
humanities to teach future medical professionals, describe this as an expe-
rience of “discomfort … when encountering a person, an experience, or a
perspective which is unfamiliar” (2014, 974) to the learner. Since repro-
duction and sexuality are controversial classroom topics that touch upon
“politicized issues, issues easily personalized, [or] issues easily magnified
by extremism or lack of diversity” (Burkstrand-Reid, Carbone, and
Hendricks 2011, 678), the exercise was also a way to place learners, and
the instructor, in a state of emotional imbalance. In turn, the experiences
of and reactions to melding performance and analysis became for everyone
(including both authors, in their respective roles) “compasses”—a word
used by Bresler (2019) to envision the pedagogical possibilities of using
arts-based research methods in the classroom. For all involved, the educa-
tional space as a stage, and the use of arts-based research activities with an
intersectional lens to explore discomfort, became that cognitive and emo-
tional compass that “orient[ed] us toward that which we encounter[ed]
and simultaneously enhance[d] understanding of who we are and who we
aspire to be” (Bresler 2019, 651).
As we highlighted earlier in this text, one of most reflected upon parts
of the learning experience was reproductive health policy affecting how
students would engage with their patients. And, for the instructor? Well,
for the first author, her unease is connected to the many difficulties this
34 A. MEJIA AND D. BALANGOY
new generation of providers will encounter as they graduate and start their
professional lives in a contentious second half of 2020, where U.S. politics
are informed not only by the continuous neoliberalization of healthcare
(Laster Pirtle 2020; Ahlbach et al. 2021) but by politically inflamed cul-
tural practices founded on science denialism (Gonsalves and Yamey 2020;
Yamey and Gonsalves 2020; Rudolph et al. 2021). For the second author,
who plans to train as a physician and eventually provide reproductive
health services to Black women, the political elements are painfully per-
sonal and equally distressing.
We also need think of the possibility of learners’ resistance to explore
reproductive oppression along the lines of race and gender and the effects
of students’ political ideologies on pedagogical exercises exploring health
inequities. The authors are both racially minoritized women navigating a
social context influenced by regionally unique affective economies of racial
resentment (Bonilla-Silva and Forman 2000) and White fragility (Nichols
and Wacek 2019; Evans-Winters and Hines 2020). Thus, the findings pre-
sented here take into consideration this limitation.
A small minority of students decided to opt out of the assignment due
to their religious views on abortion and sexuality, as noted earlier in the
section “Choosing to Not Choose, or Bravely Choosing to Stay.” Some of
these students also remarked that the class was focusing too much on rac-
ism and racialized oppression. There are two social dynamics we ask facili-
tators to take into consideration if replicating or modifying this applied
health humanities exercise. First, it is vital to understand the role of reli-
gious attitudes at the smaller socio-political and geographic level of the
population (instead of attitudes at the level of the state) when discussing
reproductive health. Adamczyk and Valdimarsdóttir (2018) argue that
analyses at the county level (in the United States, the second-level of
administrative division within a geographical area) gives us a more com-
plex understanding of societal perspectives on abortion than analyses
based only on primary-level/state-level data. Their analysis of the General
Social Survey (GSS), a survey that has captured U.S. public perspectives
on socially relevant issues since 1972 (Erikson and Tedin 2019), found
that an increase in religious attendance at the county level pointed to
“both religious and secular residents [having] more disapproving views
about abortion” (Adamczyk and Valdimarsdóttir 2018, 140, empha-
sis ours).
While there is no way for us to determine individual religious practices,
we can imagine how students’ spiritual practices might affect how they
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