Editor's Foreword: Remembering Carol Donley

Abstract

Editor's Foreword:Remembering Carol Donley Michael Blackie The field of Literature and Medicine has lost one of its most passionate early proponents. Carol Donley, cofounder of Hiram College's Center for Literature and Medicine and the Literature and Medicine book series published by Kent State University Press, among other remarkable achievements, died this past April from complications of Covid. I met Carol in 2008, when I joined the faculty at Hiram to teach in the Biomedical Humanities program there, the first of its kind in the US, and to participate in the Center's programming. But her influence on me as a mentor began years before, when in the Modern Language Association publication Teaching Literature and Medicine I came across a course she had codesigned and taught at Hiram called "The Tyranny of the Normal."1 What an inspiring gift. I developed a course based on Carol's class that followed it closely, down to the name. But as I became more comfortable asking the kinds of questions the course modeled, and as my knowledge of the field expanded, I renamed it "Perils of the Normal." I've since taught numerous permutations of the class in two baccalaureate programs and two medical schools over the last twenty years, each iteration becoming more reflective of the dynamic field Carol helped create. Another example of Carol's vision for what we now call the Health Humanities is captured in an essay she wrote for Literature and Medicine's 10th anniversary.2 Beginning by praising the journal for its analysis of healers beyond the white, heroic male physician to celebrate contributions from nursing and other allied health professions, she then puts forth a list of research topics for future work. The list is prescient. It anticipates developments in the field, like the emphasis on illness experiences as a genre and the importance of narrative, while also foreseeing the challenges of our present moment. For example, she demands that our scholarly agendas "include more research on images of black Americans as healers and on the images of other minorities [End Page 1] in America (Native American, Hispanic, Asian American)" (30). She provides a series of guiding questions for this work, such as "What do healers within these groups mean to the members of the groups?" and "What limits do the prejudices of the majority impose on them?" (30). Another research agenda she identifies is the essential but largely unacknowledged contributions of informal caregivers. "We need," she argues, "studies of the images of healers out in the streets and in the homes, members of the family, as often as not, who have taken on that role" (31). These questions are as relevant today as they were in 1991 and make clear how much work remains to be done in the field—and in the pages of this journal. I came across Carol's reflective essay when I was writing my own for Literature and Medicine's 40th anniversary. Reading it reminded me of how much I've gained from her mentorship, in print and in her presence. Throughout her career, she held true to the belief that the humanities complete the health professions. I am deeply grateful for her generous wisdom, her fearless imagination, and her enduring example. Thank you, Carol. NOTES 1. Hawkins and McEntyre, Teaching Literature and Medicine; Donley and Buckley, "Tyranny of the Normal." 2. Donley, "Changing Images of Healers." Further references from this essay will be cited parenthetically in the text. BIBLIOGRAPHY Donley, Carol. "Changing Images of Healers." Literature and Medicine 10 (1991): 18–33. Google Scholar Donley, Carol, and Sheryl Buckley. "The Tyranny of the Normal." In Teaching Literature and Medicine, edited by Anne Hunsaker Hawkins and Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, 163–74. New York: Modern Language Association, 2000. Google Scholar Hawkins, Anne Hunsaker, and Marilyn Chandler McEntyre. Teaching Literature and Medicine. New York: Modern Language Association, 2000. Google Scholar Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press