Long-awaited news: Keywords for the Health Humanities is available for pre-order today! This book, edited by Sari Altshuler, Priscilla Wald, and Jonathan Metzl, compiles 70 entries by 70 authors on the words whose meanings shape the landscape of health and care. I know it will illuminate for years to come, and I can’t wait to read and assign it.

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I’m thrilled to have contributed the entry on “Observation.” Here’s the opening paragraph to my essay:

Observation: from the Latin observationem, a watching over, “an action . . . performed with prescribed usage,” as in the observation of a religious rite or a civic ritual expressing a patriotic ideal (OED). The ritualistic undertones point to the sacred nature of the everyday work of busy clinicians: seeing patients. Observation is crucial to diagnosis, to the creation of treatment plans, and to the promotion of healing. To do it accurately, unhinged from judgment, is an act of respect, healing, and mastery. For a patient to be accurately seen and heard is a major event in their journey—and too often a rare occurrence.

Alexa Miller, “Observation,” in Keywords for the health humanities,
Altschuler, Wald and Metzl, Eds. NYU Press: 2022.

Huge thanks to the editors to their vision and the massive effort to pull this work together. Don’t forget to order the book and suggest your local and campus library do the same.

Here’s the Table of Contents:

Introduction – Sari Altschuler, Jonathan Metzl, Priscilla Wald

Access – Todd Carmody

Aging – Erin Gentry Lamb

Anxiety – Justine Murison

Bioethics – Lisa Lee

Care – Rachel Adams

Carrier – Lisa Lynch

Chronic – Ed Cohen 

Cognition – Deborah Jenson

Colonialism – Pratik Chakrabarti 

Compassion – Lisa Diedrich

Contagion – Annika Mann 

Creativity – Jay Baruch and Michael Barthman

Data – Kirsten Ostherr 

Death – Maura Spiegel

Diagnosis –- Martha Lincoln

Disability – Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

Disaster – Martin Halliwell 

Disease – Robert Aronowitz

Drug – Anne Pollock

Emotion – Kathleen Woodward

Empathy – Jane Thrailkill

Environment – David Pellow

Epidemic – Christos Lyntaris 

Evidence – Pamela Gilbert 

Experiment – Helen Tilley

Gender – Gwen D’Arcangelis 

Genetic – Sandra Lee 

Global Health – Robert Peckham

Harm – Tod Chambers 

History – David S. Jones

Human Rights – Jaymelee Kim

Humanities – Sari Altschuler

Humanity – Samuel Dubal

Immunity – Cristobal Silva

Indigeneity – Michele Desmarais and Regina Idoate

Life – Matthew Taylor

Medicine – Sayantani DasGupta 

Memory – James Gregory Chappel

Microbe – Kym Weedski 

Narrative – Rita Charon

Natural – Corinna Treitel 

Neurodiversity – Ralph Savarese

Normal – Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens

Observation – Alexa Miller

Pain – Catherine Belling

Pathological – Michael Blackie 

Patient – Nancy Tomes 

Pollution – Sara Jensen Carr

Poverty – Percy Hintzen

Precision – Kathryn Tabb

Psychosis – Angela Woods

Race – Rana Hogarth 

Reproduction – Aziza Ahmed

Risk – Amy Boesky

Sense – Erica Fretwell

Sex – René Esparza 

Sleep – Benjamin Reiss

Stigma – Allan Brandt 

Stress – David Cantor

Technology – John Base and Ron Sandler

Toxic – Heather Houser 

Trauma – Debbie Weinstein

Treatment – Keir Waddington and Martin Willis 

Virus – John Lwanda

Wound – Harris Solomon