One of the more challenging aspects of the medical humanities -- as well as one of its greatest strengths -- is its interdisciplinary nature. While this interdisciplinarity is significant in a variety of ways, it does tend to make research something of a challenge. This is mostly because there is obviously no central database, commercial or otherwise, that compiles articles and sources from disciplines as different as philosophy, art, literature, anthropology, sociology, history, and religion, for example. Thus, one of the primary initial functions of this MH weblog will be to act, in effect, as a literature metacrawler.
I will periodically (at least twice a month) survey about 20 -25 journals that seem most relevant to the medical humanities, and will compile the abstracts on this blog. This blog will obviously be searchable, so the hope is that, over time, this blog will serve in part as an index of some of the more recent sources of research and theory in the medical humanities. There is already a medical humanities database project, and, ideally, this blog will exist as a supplement to that sorely needed database.
In addition, I will survey the Social Science Research Network for manuscripts and articles that are relevant and available. One of the many advantages of SSRN is that the articles on the website are available for download without a subscription to a commercial database. Thus, where possible, I will link to SSRN.
http://www.medhumanities.org/
