Main description:

In Hospital Land USA, Wendy Simonds analyzes the wide-reaching powers of medicalization: the dynamic processes by which medical authorities, institutions, and ideologies impact our everyday experiences, culture, and social life. Simonds documents her own Hospital Land adventures and draws on a wide range of U.S. cultural representations - from memoirs to medical mail, from hospital signs to disaster movies - in order to urge critical thinking about conventional notions of care, health, embodiment, identity, suffering, and mortality.

This book is intended for general readers, medical practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students in courses on medical sociology, medicine, medical ethics, nursing, public health, carework, visual culture, cultural studies, and gerontology.

Contents:

Introduction: Collaborating with the Dead

Chapter One: Chet Goes to Chemo: The Semiotics and Sadism of the Medical Industrial Complex;

Chapter Two: More Adventures in Hospital Land: An Alternative Medical History

Chapter Three: Sick Stories: Medicalized Media

Conclusion: Instead of a Happy Ending