This article examines the political role of illness in Émile Zola’s ‘La Faute de l’abbé Mouret’ (‘The Sin of Father Mouret’, 1875) in articulating the difference between a religious and a secular body. Published in the early French Third Republic (1870–1940), this novel shows the Zolian body as the nexus upon which religious and republi…[Read more]

In ‘Degeneration’ (1892), Max Nordau included Émile Zola in his theory that fin-de-siècle artists were a danger to society. According to Nordau, the ‘false science’ in Zola’s Naturalist novels would erode social progress in their alleged preoccupation with disease, sexual deviancy and amorality. This article proposes that degeneration is, how…[Read more]

Im Ayurveda bedarf die Entstehung von Epidemien einer gesonderten Erklärung, da sie nicht mit dem dort gültigen allgemeinen Verständnis der Krankheitsentstehung in Einklang zu bringen ist. Das Grundkonzept sieht vor, dass Menschen je nach Konstitution, Ernährung, Körperkraft, Gewöhnung,
Charakter und Alter für bestimmte Krankheiten anfäll…[Read more]

Abstract of my full article published on disability and masculinity in the Global South.

Slides accompanying a talk presented at a joint research meeting of the Sushruta Project and the Classical Āyurveda Text Study Group in Vienna, July 2022.

This article shows that James Joyce drew inspiration from the Philadelphia Inquirer for the period 1903-1904, particularly when writing the Aeolus episode of Ulysses. The 11 Jan 1903 Sunday edition of this newspaper is shown to have inspired the “crossed keys” of Leopold Bloom in the Aeolus episode, while leading Joyce to connect Shakespeare’s “…[Read more]

The term cancer climax is meant as, in the narrative, the building culmination of the illness to a narrative point at which either the ill or the illness finally succumbs; the cancer climax is not necessarily synonymous with the overall narrative climax or peak of the story. Creators might place it at a separate point in their works to impart a…[Read more]

Cyprian’s Epistle 63 represents the earliest extant account of the proper meaning and administration of the eucharistic cup. Against a group of Christians who were taking only water, Cyprian argues that wine is necessary for the ritual to be effective. While there has been much discussion surrounding the biblical references marshaled by Cyprian t…[Read more]

Humankind, for Gregory of Nyssa, was poisoned through a primordial act of eating the forbidden fruit from the Garden of Eden. As a result, the toxin of sin and death has been blended into the body and soul of each person, dispersing itself throughout the component parts of their nature. If eating and drinking initiated the spiritual and physical…[Read more]

Like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) itself, Just Roll with It by Veronica Agarwal and Lee Durfey-Lavoie does not reveal itself immediately. The YA graphic novel betrays nothing on its cover, with its summary blurb, or for the first sixty-plus pages of the story. With no overt initial comment, the narrative follows sixth-grader Maggie as she…[Read more]

This paper explores the methodological and discursive transition in Aurel Voina’s theoretical conceptualisation of cosmetic science. The primary focus is the rewriting of personal and professional identity, assessing how Aurel Voina negotiated his conceptual and practical expertise from his role as eugenics ideologue and policy maker in the i…[Read more]

The historiola of an ancient Egyptian spell (AEMT 90) describes how Isis becomes a fugitive to protect her unborn/young son Horus from Seth, the murderer of her brother/husband Osiris. As her travel-group seeks refuge in the Nile Delta, a noblewoman’s inhospitality to the unexpected visitors results in her young son being stung by Isis’s sco…[Read more]

The article is an example of a visual map of the literature review on a page. Such a road-map or concept map structures the literature and helps readers grasp the key threads and messages, including the theoretical positioning of your review. This review looked at the genealogy of hidden dis/ability based on Latour’s and Baudrillard’s work.

This editorial discusses the articles published and the activities undertaken by The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship during 2021, and calls for research system-wide cultural changes and wider contextual awareness in order to make scholarly communication fairer and up to the challenges of our time.

This article probes the history of education and current pedagogical practices among Malayali physician-teachers, vaidya-gurus, of Ayurveda in central Kerala. Considering the sources vaidya-gurus cite as the bases of their teaching styles, especially a three-part method known as mukhāmukhaṃ (‘face-to-face’ instruction), I discuss the place, produc…[Read more]

I work with images, stories, objects and employ object-oriented Actor-Network-Theory to co-author research with my clients. This allows us to focus on untraditional but remarkable things like hope, wants and happiness. Together, we have emerged an innovative approach that attempts to match our everyday life and all of its surprises. Disability is…[Read more]

In this article, I hitch the ever-present awareness of disease in my personal life and our shared world today to a pointed and academic reflection on the ways we consume and re-present information about disease from premodern South Asia that’s contained in texts.

A recent genetic study has revealed that the adult male buried in the most elaborate recess of the Neolithic passage-tomb at Newgrange was the child of a first-degree incestuous union, suggesting that the complex was built as a burial monument for an endogamous family elite who may have been regarded as “god-kings.” The present paper shows how clo…[Read more]