Williams and Medicine

Call for Submissions. William Carlos Williams Review: for a double issue on “Williams and Medicine,” 2022.

A double issue of the William Carlos Williams Review will be published in Spring 2022 on the topic of “Williams and Medicine,” guest-edited by Theodora Rapp Graham and Richard Ratzan,MD.

Inquiries (1-3pp.) must be submitted by January 31, 2021 and include a 1-2p. c.v. Invited essays will be expected by March 31, 2021, unless–because of COVID 19 conditions–an extension can be arranged.

Contributors are welcome from any of a variety of fields, including but not limited to medicine; literary, historical, and interdisciplinary studies; disability studies; gender, heritage, and environmental studies.

Submissions might focus on topics related to Williams’ biography and medical studies in the U.S. and abroad; Williams and the professionalization of medicine; the use of Williams’ work in therapeutic contexts and as a critique of standards of care; disease as a metaphor, as well as metaphors of gestation and birth in his poetry, fiction, drama, autobiography; irony and the comic. The focus may be on individual works, multiple works and genres, comparisons with other doctor-poets. Especially welcome is the use of previously unpublished material, including letters, essays, poems, and notes that expand the reader’s understanding of the poet’s thinking. Relevant photographs, drawings, cartoons would be considered.

Currently, several invited essays are in the works: a history of the Humanities requirement and the Doctors Kienle Humanities Center at the Penn State Health Hershey Medical School with references to faculty and students’ use of Williams’ work;  a discussion of Aging in Williams’ writing; an inquiry into the influences on Williams’ life and writing of the 1917-1919 Flu Pandemic.

Authors whose essays require clearance of materials not in the public domain are responsible for acquiring clearance of such materials from individuals, heirs/estates, library collections and archives. William Carlos Williams Review manuscript and publication guidelines are available at [url].

Contributors should forward inquiries to the guest editors:

Theodora Rapp Graham

 theorg1995@aol.com

Dr. Richard Ratzan, MD/ERM

r.m.ratzan@gmail.com