Nation,Narration, and Health in Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Guantánamo Diary</Emphasis>

Scholars have mostly analyzed information from mental health practitioners, attorneys, and institutions to critique mental health practices in the War on Terror. These sources offer limited insights into the suffering of detainees. Detainee accounts provide novel information based on their experiences at Guantánamo. Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantánamo Diary is the only text from a current detainee that provides a first-person account of his interrogations and interactions with health professionals. Despite being advertised as a diary, however, it has undergone redaction from American government officials. This article examines Slahi’s account of his interrogations and representations of mental health at Guantánamo and considers its role within the narrative function of the nation. At stake is the right of detainees to narrate, scholars to critique medical practices in the War on Terror, and the nation’s attempts to control its narration.     

From Neither/Nor to Both/And: Reconfiguring the Life and Legacy of Shirdi Sai Baba in Hagiography

The paper focuses on two hagiographic texts about the Indian saint Shirdi Sai Baba: G. R. Dabholkar’s ?rī Sāī Satcarita (1930) in Marathi and B. V. Narasimhaswami’s four-volume Life of Sai Baba (1955–69) in English. A comparative study of these texts highlights a notable shift in the saint’s life story. Whereas Dabholkar describes a saint who is “neither Hindu nor Muslim,” Narasimhaswami emphasizes particular devotional testimonies to reconstruct Shirdi Sai Baba as a syncretistic figure who is “both Hindu and Muslim.” Narasimhaswami’s reconstruction also reveals a politics of compositeness, in which a dominant Hindu embrace contains a domesticated Muslim-ness.     

Echo and the Failure of Knowing in Judith Fox’s Photographic Project <Emphasis Type="Italic">I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer’s</Emphasis>

In relationships ‘I’ and ‘you’ become ‘we’; despite individual differences, couples obtain an interdependent identity due to their shared interactions. During a serious illness, biological and biographical disruptions can put any reciprocal relationship under strain. Through intermedial analysis of Judith Fox’s photographic project, I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer’s (2009), I will explore ways the couple make sense of illness, how illness is communicated through text and image and also to identify the limits of representation. Here the photographs, I argue, solidify their relationship and echo the stuck-in-the-present state of mind brought on by Alzheimer’s.     

Imposing Order to See the Disorder: Student Depression and T.S. Eliot’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Waste Land:</Emphasis> A (Mis)reading/Diagnosis

Sometime ago, I found myself using the diagnosis of a student’s depression as a critical tool of interpretation, searching for signs of mental illness in her essay that explored order and disorder in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. I realised that my reading had become a creative act, combining poem, poet, student essay and author to create, in a sense, one (un)readable text. The present paper is a reflection upon the processes of order and disorder located in a diagnosis of “madness” and the readings of writer and text this diagnosis initiated. I look to deconstruct acts of reading and diagnosis.     

The Resources We Bring: The Cultural Assets of Diverse Medical Students

In response to the need for a more diverse workforce, our medical school developed new policies and procedures that focus on the recruitment and selection of diverse students with a specific focus on those considered underrepresented in medicine. To understand what these students bring to the practice of medicine, researchers investigated their perception of their cultural assets and how they plan to use these assets as physicians. A cross-section of 23 ethnically, culturally, and geographically diverse medical students were interviewed and data were analyzed through phenomenographical methods. The results indicate that students view themselves as having multiple assets that could be of significant value in their future practice of medicine, including: a) an interest in science and access to family members in medicine, b) personal and familial struggles with health, c) self and family as immigrants, and d) strong family and community orientations. Students perceived these as cultural assets because they could directly identify where these assets could be valuable in medicine but questioned how to maintain them throughout medical school. Now that our institution has identified these assets, next steps include administrators' investigation of ways to leverage them through curricular and educational programs.     

Medical Students’ Efforts to Integrate and/or Reclaim Authentic Identity: Insights from a Mask-Making Exercise

Medical students’ mask-making can provide valuable insights into personal and professional identity formation and wellness. A subset of first- and second-year medical students attending a medical school wellness retreat participated in a mask-making workshop. Faculty-student teams examined student masks and explanatory narratives using visual and textual analysis techniques. A quantitative survey assessed student perceptions of the experience. We identified an overarching theme: “Reconciliation/reclamation of authentic identity.” The combination of nonverbal mask-making and narrative offers rich insights into medical students’ experience and thinking. This activity promoted reflection and self-care, while providing insight regarding personal and professional development.     

Feeling Guilty or Not Guilty. Identifying Burnout Profiles among Italian Teachers

This study aimed at the assessment of psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Spanish Burnout Inventory (SBI-Ita) in a sample of Italian teachers and the analysis of burnout profiles based on a model that includes four dimensions: Enthusiasm toward job, Psychological exhaustion, Indolence, and Guilt. A self-reported questionnaire was filled out by 689 Italian teachers. Data analyses performed Multi-sample Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis. Results confirmed the hypothesized four-factor structure and the discriminant role of Guilt in differentiating clusters. Results highlights the reliability of the SBI-Ita in the assessment of teachers’ burnout. Furthermore, results evidence for a new typology of burnout that differentiate guilty from non-guilty professionals.     

Gifting Knowledge for Long Life

During nonemergency appointments at traditional sites of āyurvedic healthcare in Kerala, South India, classically trained Brāhma?a physicians and their patients seldom exchange anything of substance (whether medicinal or monetary). The physician-patient interface instead routinely involves an exchange of knowledge. Interactions between physicians and patients in these meetings evoke the highly theorized notion of the “Indian gift” and the question of prestation in South Indian societies. This article explores the nature of exchange in the supply and reception of healthcare among physicians and patients at traditional sites of āyurvedic treatment (that is, sites not affiliated with governmental or private hospitals or clinics) in contemporary Kerala. Drawing on classical treatises about the dharma of gifts (dānadharma) and the Sanskrit medical classics of āyurveda, it examines reciprocity, ideal preconditions of givers and receivers of gifts, and the possibility of a “pure gift” in the appraisal and production of wellbeing.     

The Identifiable Victim Effect: Using an Experimental-Causal-Chain Design to Test for Mediation

The identifiable victim effect (IVE) refers to individuals’ tendency to offer greater aid to identifiable victims than to statistical victims. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether emotional reactions work to mediate IVE. In two experiments based on the experimental-causal-chain design proposed by Spencer et al. (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 845–851, 2005), it was shown that an identifiable victim evokes stronger emotional reactions than does a statistical victim (Study 1). It was also demonstrated that the identifiable victim shown or described with a specific expression or information to evoke stronger emotional reactions elicited greater willingness to donate money in participants (Study 2). The results of two studies based on the experimental-causal-chain approach demonstrated that the underlying causal mechanism for the IVE is participants’ emotional reactions to identified victims. The theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.