English and the Health Humanities – focus on Lora Arduser

While “The Care and Feeding of the D-Beast” may sound like a baby monster film, it is an apt title for Professor Lora Arduser’s recently published work. This article, subtitled “Metaphors of the Lived Experience of Diabetes,” gets to the heart of the challenges, concerns, triumphs, and strategies expressed in online communities of people living with diabetes and their caregivers.

Professor Arduser identifies not as a medical humanist but more precisely as a health humanist. As she explains, the “health humanities” designation broadens the scope of the burgeoning “medical humanities” discipline. A primary original goal of medical humanities is to provide humanist training for medical students (a worthy goal, no doubt, conceived in part when physician Rita Charon recognized her students’ scant humanist training). Health humanities, however, also includes caregivers and patient discourse communities. “In medicine,” Professor Arduser says, “there are experts and lay people, but with chronic care, patients are experts.”

The ultimate goal of the health humanities is the empowerment of patients; and the formation of community is a key contributor to that sense of empowerment. Professor Arduser recognizes that “community” – and specifically health discourse community – may be formed in a variety of ways. “Community” may refer to patients with a shared identity living in physical proximity to one another as well as to online groups communicating via social media. In articles like “An Urban Appalachian Neighborhood’s Response to Diabetes” and “Warp and Weft: Weaving the Discussion Threads of an Online Community,” Professor Arduser explores the ways patients come to share their experiences with others. Impressively, the “Warp and Weft” article was nominated for the National Council of Teachers of English Best Article Reporting Quantitative or Qualitative Research.

Arduser’s focus on health humanities is shared by colleague Lisa Melancon, with whom she co-authored the article “Communities of Practice Approach: A New Model for Online Course Development and Sustainability.” She and Cheli Reutter coordinate the newly formed English department medical humanities/health humanities/ability studies research and interest group. Arduser has made productive connections with researchers on UC’s medical campus as well.

Lora Arduser is a Cincinnati native who graduated cum laude from UC’s English department and later earned master’s degrees in both anthropology and professional writing. She left Ohio to earn her PhD in Technical Communication and Rhetoric from Texas Tech University, returning in 2011 as a tenure-track assistant professor of professional writing in the English department of her thrice-over alma mater.