Reconsidering Dementia Narratives

Reconsidering Dementia Narratives PDF Author: Rebecca Bitenc
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429619502
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
Reconsidering Dementia Narratives explores the role of narrative in developing new ways of understanding, interacting with, and caring for people with dementia. It asks how the stories we tell about dementia – in fiction, life writing and film – both reflect and shape the way we think about this important condition. Highlighting the need to attend to embodied and relational aspects of identity in dementia, the study further outlines ways in which narratives may contribute to dementia care, while disputing the idea that the modes of empathy fostered by narrative necessarily bring about more humane care practices. This cross-medial analysis represents an interdisciplinary approach to dementia narratives which range across auto/biography, graphic narrative, novel, film, documentary and collaborative storytelling practices. The book aims to clarify the limits and affordances of narrative, and narrative studies, in relation to an ethically driven medical humanities agenda through the use of case studies. Answering the key question of whether dementia narratives align with or run counter to the dominant discourse of dementia as ‘loss of self’, this innovative book will be of interest to anyone interested in dementia studies, ageing studies, narrative studies in health care, and critical medical humanities.

Reconsidering Dementia Narratives

Reconsidering Dementia Narratives PDF Author: Rebecca Bitenc
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429619502
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
Reconsidering Dementia Narratives explores the role of narrative in developing new ways of understanding, interacting with, and caring for people with dementia. It asks how the stories we tell about dementia – in fiction, life writing and film – both reflect and shape the way we think about this important condition. Highlighting the need to attend to embodied and relational aspects of identity in dementia, the study further outlines ways in which narratives may contribute to dementia care, while disputing the idea that the modes of empathy fostered by narrative necessarily bring about more humane care practices. This cross-medial analysis represents an interdisciplinary approach to dementia narratives which range across auto/biography, graphic narrative, novel, film, documentary and collaborative storytelling practices. The book aims to clarify the limits and affordances of narrative, and narrative studies, in relation to an ethically driven medical humanities agenda through the use of case studies. Answering the key question of whether dementia narratives align with or run counter to the dominant discourse of dementia as ‘loss of self’, this innovative book will be of interest to anyone interested in dementia studies, ageing studies, narrative studies in health care, and critical medical humanities.

Dementia, Narrative and Performance

Dementia, Narrative and Performance PDF Author: Janet Gibson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030465470
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book Here

Book Description
Focusing mainly on case studies from Australia and the United States of America, this book considers how people with dementia represent themselves and are represented in ‘theatre of the real’ productions and care home interventions, assessing the extent to which the ‘right kind’ of dementia story is being affirmed or challenged. It argues that this type of story — one of tragedy, loss of personhood, biomedical deficit, and socio-economic ‘crisis — produces dementia and the people living with it, as much as biology does. It proposes two novel ideas. One is that the ‘gaze’ of theatre and performance offers a reframing of some of the behaviours and actions of people with dementia, through which deficit views can be changed to ones of possibility. The other is that, conversely, dementia offers productive perspectives on ’theatre of the real’. Scanning contemporary critical studies about and practices of ‘theatre of the real’ performances and applied theatre interventions, the book probes what it means when certain ‘theatre of the real’ practices (specifically verbatim and autobiographical) interact with storytellers considered, culturally, to be ‘unreliable narrators’. It also explores whether autobiographical theatre is useful in reinforcing a sense of ‘self’ for those deemed no longer to have one. With a focus on the relationship between stories and selves, the book investigates how selves might be rethought so that they are not contingent on the production of lucid self-narratives, consistent language, and truthful memories.

Contemporary Narratives of Ageing, Illness, Care

Contemporary Narratives of Ageing, Illness, Care PDF Author: Katsura Sako
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000536521
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of essays explores cultural narratives of care in the contexts of ageing and illness. It includes both text-based and practice-based contributions by leading and emerging scholars in humanistic studies of ageing. The authors consider care not only in film (feature and documentary) and literature (novel, short story, children’s picturebook) but also in the fields of theatre performance, photography and music. The collection has a broad geographical scope, with case studies and primary texts from Europe and North America but also from Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Argentina and Mexico. The volume asks what care, autonomy and dependence may mean and how these may be inflected by social and cultural specificities. Ultimately, it invites us to reflect on our relations to others as we face the global and local challenges of care in ageing societies.

Identity Construction and Illness Narratives in Persons with Disabilities

Identity Construction and Illness Narratives in Persons with Disabilities PDF Author: Chalotte Glintborg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000171620
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 138

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book investigates how being diagnosed with various disabilities impacts on identity. Once diagnosed with a disability, there is a risk that this label can become the primary status both for the person diagnosed as well as for their family. This reification of the diagnosis can be oppressive because it subjugates humanity in such a way that everything a person does can be interpreted as linked to their disability. Drawing on narrative approaches to identity in psychology and social sciences, the bio-psycho-social model and a holistic approach to disabilities, the chapters in this book understand disability as constructed in discourse, as negotiated among speaking subjects in social contexts, and as emergent. By doing so, they amplify voices that may have otherwise remained silent and use storytelling as a way of communicating the participants' realities to provide a more in-depth understanding of their point of view. This book will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, medical humanities, disability research methods, narrative theory, and rehabilitation studies.

Rethinking Pain in Person-Centred Health Care

Rethinking Pain in Person-Centred Health Care PDF Author: Stephen Buetow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000339394
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 136

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book explores how person-centred health care could be refined to help persons alleviate pain-related distress and construct pain as a potentially positive experience. Rethinking Pain in Person-Centred Health Care is a fascinating contribution to the multidisciplinary literature on person-centred health care, pain and ethics. Traditionally, Western intellectual culture has downplayed the intuitive and emotional, promoting instead rational, natural-scientific perspectives. Applied to pain, an instrumental approach promotes the immediate and effective relief of pain, due to the widespread suffering and expense it can cause. However, different persons experience pain in different ways and Buetow moves beyond a commitment to eliminate pain to exploring how benefits of pain could include creating and managing meaning from pain. Rather than always looking to put pain behind them, persons may flourish by moving around pain, through pain, into pain and above pain. Buetow argues that this model depends on adopting a person-centred approach to health care, focusing less on the condition of pain and more on mobilizing the persons who present with, and manage, pain. This book will be of interest to professionals and academics/researchers in the fields of psychology and psychiatry who have a special interest in people with persistent pain conditions. It will also be an invaluable resource for physiotherapists, chronic pain consultants in secondary care and GPs.

The Loss of Small White Clouds

The Loss of Small White Clouds PDF Author: Morgan Batch
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000922820
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 175

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume seeks to instigate a discussion about dementia in theatre. The discussions in this book borrow from the literature on dementia’s representation in other artforms, while reflecting on theatre’s unique capacity to incorporate multiple artforms in a live context (hypermediacy). The author examines constructions of diegesis and the use of various performance tools, including physical theatre, puppetry, and postdramatic performance. She discusses stage representations of interior experiences of dementia; selfhood in dementia; the demarcation of those with dementia from those without; endings, erasure, and the pursuit of catharsis; placelessness and disruptions of traditional dramatic constructions of time; and ultimately, performances creatively led by people with dementia. The book traces patterns of narrativisation on the stage—including common dramaturgical forms, settings, and character relationships—as well as examples that transcend mainstream representation. This book is important reading for theatre and performance students, scholars, and practitioners, as well as cultural studies writers engaged in research about narratives of dementia.

Narrating, Framing, Reflecting ‘Disability’

Narrating, Framing, Reflecting ‘Disability’ PDF Author: Wilfried Raussert
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111379272
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
Fostering a dialog between Critical Disability Studies, American Studies, InterAmerican Studies, and Global Health Studies, the edited compilation conceptualizes disability and (mental) illnesses as a cultural narrative enabling a deeper social critique. By looking at contemporary cultural productions primarily from the USA, Canada, and the Caribbean, the books’ objective is to explore how literary texts and other cultural productions from the Americas conceptualize, construct, and represent disability as a narrative and to investigate the deep structures underlying the literary and cultural discourses on and representations of disability including parameters such as disease, racism, and sexism among others. Disability is read as a shifting phenomenon rooted in the cultures and histories of the Americas.

Global Perspectives on Probing Narratives in Healthcare

Global Perspectives on Probing Narratives in Healthcare PDF Author: Casal, Teresa
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1668480654
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
There is often a communication disconnect between medical caregivers, including doctors, nurses, therapists, and other assistive medical personnel, and the patient. While medical staff usually understand a patient’s symptoms, causes, and treatments, communicating this understanding to a patient using industry terminologies can lead to confusion and misunderstanding, and similarly, patients may lack the vocabulary to effectively communicate their experiences back to their caregivers. A new approach to communication must be bridged between these groups by individuals who have experience on both sides of the conversation. Previous studies of doctors who end up in the role of the patient reveal how these individuals have a dual perspective on illness, combining their medical knowledge with their own personal medical experiences. Narratives, including autobiographical accounts and fictional stories, can help bridge the gap between experiential and academic knowledge of illness by expanding one’s limited perspective and accessing others’ points of view. Autobiographical and fictional narratives can both play a role in developing a more comprehensive understanding of illness beyond simply treating the disease. It is necessary to further examine the ethical and methodological underpinnings of narrative-based interventions in the education of healthcare professionals, practitioners, and patients. Global Perspectives on Probing Narratives in Healthcare offers a multidisciplinary examination of theoretical and methodological uses of narratives in healthcare by bringing together medical aspects of healthcare and the study of arts and humanities. This illustrates specific applications of narratives in healthcare settings, including improvement of clinical skills, performance of the caring role, and self-efficacy for building a true partnership in the patient’s health journey through varied approaches, up-to-date tools, and resources that can be transferred and adapted to specific educational and healthcare contexts. This diverse collection of expert knowledge and experience is led by editors with over 20 years of teaching experience: Dr. Teresa Casal of the University of Lisbon, Portugal and Dr. Maria de Jesus Cabral of the University of Minho, Portugal. Expertise featured in this book includes contributions from some of the most prestigious academic institutions, including Columbia University in the United States, King’s College in the United Kingdom, University of Padua in Italy, and more. It is an essential resource for healthcare and social science researchers, academics, advanced healthcare students, health training and education departments, healthcare practitioners and patients’ associations, and policymakers in healthcare who are looking to broaden their scope of understanding of the patient experience.

Alzheimer’s Disease in Contemporary U.S. Fiction

Alzheimer’s Disease in Contemporary U.S. Fiction PDF Author: Cristina Garrigós
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000410625
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume seeks to bring readers to a deeper understanding of contemporary cultural and social configurations of Alzheimer’s disease by analyzing 21st-century U.S. novels in which the disease plays a key narrative role. Via analysis of selected works, Garrigós considers how the erasure of memory in a person with Alzheimer’s affects our idea of the identity of that person and their sense of belonging to a group. Starting out from three different types of memory (individual, social and cultural), the study focuses on the narrative strategies that authors use to configure how the disease is perceived and represented. This study is significant not only because of what the texts reveal about those with Alzheimer’s, but also for what they say about us - about the authors and readers who are producing and consuming these texts, about how we see this disease, and what our attitudes to it say about contemporary U.S. society.

Literature and Ageing

Literature and Ageing PDF Author: Elizabeth Barry
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845717
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book Here

Book Description
New approaches to the topics of old age and becoming old depicted in a range of texts from modern literature. The central focus of this book is the experience of growing old as represented in literature from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day: an experience shaped by changes in longevity, a new science of senescence, the availability of state pensions, and other phenomena of recent history. The collection considers the increasing prominence of stories of ageing, challenging the idea that old age is an uneventful time outside of the parameters of literary narrative. Instead, age increasingly is the story. As the older population swells, political crises are construed as the old stealing from the young, and the rights of older people are sacrificed to the economics of care, it becomes ever more important to think about and question, as literature does, the symbolic aspects of ageing - the cultural imaginary that determines the way that society sees old age. The work in this volume explores age stories in relation to futurity, precarity and climate change. It brings to light narratives of resistance to colonial imperialism and reproductive futurism framed in terms of age; and tests the lived experience of growing old and the challenge it offers to individualistic conceptions of selfhood, work and care. The literary works examined - hailing from England, North America, Japan and the Caribbean, and including texts by Margaret Drabble, Samuel Beckett and Matthew Thomas - ask how we feel about ageing - so often the determinant of how we think about it.