133 Hassan N, Howell J. Med Humanit June 2022 Vol 48 No 2 Global Health Humanities in transition Narin Hassan, 1 Jessica Howell 2 This special issue on the Global Health Humanities originally was conceptualised before the COVID-19 pandemic began, and then grew into fruition during the height of a global health crisis. As co-edi- tors, we agreed that the advent of the pandemic necessitated a critical re-evalua- tion of the basic tenets of Global Health Humanities as a developing field. The project has been shaped during a moment in which daily news and information around issues of health, contagion and global interconnectedness have asked us to shift and rethink the very questions that need to be posed. Therefore, the issue not only seeks to represent the diverse disci- plinary, methodological and theoretical approaches of the Global Health Human- ities, but also to model scholarship during a time of transition. We revised cluster topics midstream to accommodate a new group of essays on COVID-19. Even within essays from different thematic clus- ters, authors who mentioned COVID-19 as a relevant context to their work were encouraged to critically engage with their own positionality in relation to the pandemic. These editorial changes are not only organisational in nature, but also reflect both editors’ training in the humanities. One tenet within humanities scholarship is that forms of human knowledge are not ‘found’ but created. In Psychiatric Power, philosopher Michel Foucault explains his concept of the archaeology of knowledge in relationship to scientific discovery: he asserts, ‘the supposedly universal subject of knowledge is really only an individual historically qualified according to certain modalities’, and ‘the discovery of truth is really a certain modality of the produc- tion of truth’ (Foucault 2008, 238). What is the relevance of these claims to Global Health Humanities scholarship, espe- cially during a pandemic? After all, since late 2019, we have all observed emerging scientific knowledge that deeply impacts our individual lives. Does Foucault’s work suggest that scientific discoveries regarding COVID-19 are illusory or unimportant? Not at all. Similarly, Global Health Humanities as a field acknowl- edges the real-world efforts to alleviate human suffering by health practitioners and scientists. Rather, Foucault’s words are an invi- tation for us to analyse how developing knowledge forms are impacted by global health priorities, social systems and cultural expectations. We also have the opportunity to think critically about how certain cultural forms and formations, such as literature, art, film and music, engage and co-create scientific knowl- edge. Furthermore, Foucault’s assertion that ‘the supposedly universal subject of knowledge is really only an individual historically qualified according to certain modalities’, invites us to analyse how our own embodied experiences affect our scholarship, understanding ourselves to be embedded within and influenced by our historical moment. During this moment, scholars are also reassessing their own relationships to their work, understanding through the insights provided by antiracist movements that even the ‘universal subject of knowledge’ or the ‘knowing I’, is a Western construct that grew and was perpetuated through racist and colonialist structures. 1 Conver- sations between the two co-editors grew out of a shared pedagogical and schol- arly concern with embodiment, race and empire. As scholars of nineteenth-century literature and culture, our approach to Global Health Humanities is grounded in understanding specific cultural contexts and historical legacies informing health practices, as well as close engagement with the formal and rhetorical aspects of literary texts including biography, life writing and travel writing. Like many academic projects, the devel- opment of this issue has spanned a number of years and taken a variety of forms. In Spring 2019, we both attended the Inter- disciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies annual conference in Dallas, Texas. Narin had organised a round table on the topic of ‘Teaching Race in the Nineteenth Century’, which Jessica attended. The panel considered, among other issues, teaching controversial/difficult topics in the current political moment, how embod- iment and emotional labour matters in the teaching of topics related to race and empire, and the pitfalls of current diversity narratives and efforts to expand issues of race within curricular and insti- tutional efforts and dialogues. After the panel, Jessica reached out to Narin about the possibility of co-editing what is now this collection on Global Health Human- ities. The work on the initial proposal, distribution of the call for proposals, vetting papers and revision suggestions to contributors, were conducted over 2 years by email and then Zoom. As we entered Spring 2020, 1 year into the project, when we had already finalised contributors and provided feedback on drafts, it became urgently important that we re-evaluate and situate ourselves and the collection in relation to the emerging global health crisis. Through numerous online meetings and reassessments of the various essays and sections, we confronted new sets of questions, fueled by the day- to-day realities and disruptions brought about by the pandemic, the trauma of the daily news cycle, the intensity of pre-election political rhetoric, and the ongoing racial tensions and unrest, which became even more urgent in June 2020 as the Black Lives Matter movement grew. The year 2020 made more visible things that had been festering but needed atten- tion and care. The evolution of this project took place as we witnessed radical shifts in the way we work, communicate and think about our health and well-being. It developed at a time when our sense of temporality and space shifted through lockdowns, periods of quarantine, and days on Zoom which filled gaps of both time and location. As the project evolved in 2020, our online collaboration became an important form of scholarly community during a time of upheaval. Our sense of connection to the global and local communities around us (academic and otherwise) shifted, under- scoring the urgency of paying attention to health and to our own bodies in relation to others. The invitation posed by the long times- cale of academic publishing has also been a challenge, as we find ourselves (still) writing in an unsettled time. Knowing what is at stake and recognising that the project should be dealing with the contemporary moment has, at times, acted as a kind of wall or barrier—the issue can never actually address ‘reality’, as reality keeps changing and moving (as Foucault observes). Rather, as editors, we sensed from March 2020 onwards that our writing, and the project as a whole, had ever-evolving layers. At one level, we were working on an almost archaeological process of digging and 1 LMC, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA 2 English, Texas A&M University System, College Station, Texas, USA Correspondence to Dr Jessica Howell, English, Texas A&M University System, College Station, TX 77840, USA; jmhowell@tamu.edu Editorial University. Protected by copyright. on May 2, 2023 at Medical Sciences Library Texas A & M http://mh.bmj.com/ Med Humanities: first published as 10.1136/medhum-2022-012448 on 7 June 2022. Downloaded from