Literature and Medicine

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Call for Papers and Guidelines for Contributors

Literature and Medicine is a peer-reviewed journal publishing scholarship that explores representational and cultural practices concerning health care and the body. Areas of interest include disease, illness, and health; the cultures of biomedical science and technology and of the clinic; disability; and violence, trauma, and power relations as these are represented and interpreted in broadly-defined archives of verbal, visual, and material texts. Literature and Medicine features one thematic and one general issue each year. Past theme issues have explored identity and difference; contagion and infection; cancer pathography; the representations of genomics; and the narration of pain.

Literature and Medicine is published semiannually. Theme issues are announced in calls for papers in the journal and on the journal website. Literature and Medicine editors will consider essay clusters devoted to a particular topic or written on a specific occasion. Submissions on any aspect of literature and medicine will be considered, but the journal rarely publishes short notes, personal essays, or creative writing. Authors are advised to look carefully at past issues of the journal (available on the journal website) before submitting their work. We welcome submissions by graduate students, but encourage authors to rework term papers into publishable manuscripts (as one does in turning dissertation into book) before submission.

Manuscripts should be between 5,000 and 9,000 words in length, approximately twenty-five to forty pages inclusive of double-spaced notes. Please include an abstract of 100–150 words and 3–5 keywords.

All submissions should have text, endnotes, and bibliography double-spaced and prepared according to guidelines in The Chicago Manual of Style, current edition. Authors will be responsible for securing permission to include visual images, figures, or verbal quotations that exceed fair use.

Literature and Medicine is a peer-reviewed journal. Authors’ names should appear only on a cover sheet, and any identifiers in the text should be masked so manuscripts can be reviewed anonymously. Literature and Medicine reviews only unpublished manuscripts that are not simultaneously under review for publication elsewhere.

Manuscripts must be submitted in digital form here. 

Correspondence should be sent to:
Michael Blackie, PhD
Executive Editor, Literature and Medicine

808 S Wood St Department of Medical Education
Chicago, Illinois 60612-7309

Email: blackie@uic.edu

Executive Editor

Michael Blackie, The University of Illinois at Chicago

Managing Editor

Anna Fenton-Hathaway

Senior Consulting Editors

Catherine Belling 
Rita Charon 
Anne Hudson Jones 
Maura Spiegel

Associate Editors

Sari Altschuler 
Tod Chambers 
Sayantani DasGupta 
Lisa Diedrich 
Rebecca Garden 
Martha Stoddard Holmes 
Ann Jurecic 
Thomas Long 
Juliet McMullin 
Kirsten Ostherr 
Lorenzo Servitje 
Susan Squier 
Jaipreet Virdi 
Priscilla Wald

Book Review Editor

Travis Chi Wing Lau

Comics Editor

MK Czerwiec

Contributing Editors

Felice Aull 
Gert H. Brieger 
D. Heyward Brock 
Ronald A. Carson 
Larry R. Churchill 
Arthur W. Frank 
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson 
Sander Gilman 
Peter W. Graham 
Steven Marcus 
Marilyn Chandler McEntyre 
Jonathan M. Metzl 
Kathryn Montgomery 
David B. Morris 
Kathryn Allen Rabuzzi 
Margrit Shildrick

International Contributing Editors

Robin S. Downie 
John Wiltshire 
Faith McLellan

Sponsors

Health Humanities, Department of Medical Education, University of Illinois at Chicago

The Hopkins Press Journals Ethics and Malpractice Statement can be found at the ethics-and-malpractice page.

Peer Review Policy

Literature and Medicine accepts for consideration original scholarly manuscripts, not under consideration at any other publication, that explore the connections between literature (broadly defined, in any media) and medical health care. The journal does not consider unsolicited submissions of short notes, informal pieces, personal essays, or creative writing. Original translations are considered, if accompanied by substantial scholarly introduction or annotation. We welcome proposals for guest-edited theme issues or essay clusters devoted to a particular topic or marking a specific occasion (contact the editor directly regarding these).

Literature and Medicine is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal.  Preliminary desk review rejects clearly unsuitable or weak submissions. Submissions that prima facie meet the review criteria—original and relevant contribution to the field;  humanities methodology; evidence in support of claims; quality of expression—are assigned two reviewers familiar with the subject matter and the field. Reviewers are asked to recommend rejection, acceptance with major revisions, or acceptance with minor revisions. The editor adjudicates, and provides a final decision: reject, accept with major revisions or with minor revisions, or reject with option to revise and resubmit. Resubmitted manuscripts are sent for re-review to at least one of the original reviewers, along with their original report. Accepted submissions are returned with required and suggested revisions, and revised manuscripts are reviewed by the editor, who makes the final acceptance decision. The manuscript will then be copy-edited in collaboration with the author.

Timetable: ​varies depending on alacrity of peer reviewers and the fact that the journal publishes one thematic and one general issue yearly.

Send books for review to:

Dr. Travis Chi Wing Lau
50 W. Broad St. #3205
Columbus, OH 43215

Email lau1@kenyon.edu

Please send book review copies to the contact above. Review copies received by the Johns Hopkins University Press office will be discarded.

Abstracting & Indexing Databases

• Adis International Ltd.
  • Reactions Weekly (Online)
• Clarivate Analytics
  • Arts & Humanities Citation Index
  • Current Contents
  • Web of Science
• De Gruyter Saur
  • Dietrich's Index Philosophicus
  • IBZ - Internationale Bibliographie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenliteratur
  • Internationale Bibliographie der Rezensionen Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlicher Literatur
• EBSCOhost
  • Academic Search Alumni Edition, 4/1/2005-
  • Academic Search Complete, 4/1/2005-
  • Academic Search Elite, 4/1/2005-
  • Academic Search Premier, 4/1/2005-
  • Current Abstracts, 4/1/2005-
  • Humanities International Complete, 4/1/2005-
  • Humanities International Index, 4/1/2005-
  • Humanities Source, 4/1/2005-
  • Humanities Source Ultimate, 4/1/2005-
  • International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text, 1/1/1993-
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
  • RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (Repertoire International de Litterature Musicale)
  • TOC Premier (Table of Contents), 4/1/2005-
• Elsevier BV
  • EMBASE
  • Scopus, 1986-
• Gale
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
• National Library of Medicine
  • PubMed
• OCLC
  • ArticleFirst, vol.11, no.2, 1992-vol.29, no.1, 2011
  • Electronic Collections Online, vol.14, no.1, 1995-vol.29, no.1, 2011
  • Periodical Abstracts, v.19, n.1, 2000-v.28, n.2, 2009
• Personal Alert (E-mail)
• ProQuest
  • Art, Design & Architecture Collection, 04/01/1996-
  • Arts & Humanities Database, 04/01/1996-
  • Arts Premium Collection, 4/1/1996-
  • Health & Medical Collection, 4/1/1996-
  • Health Research Premium Collection, 4/1/1996-
  • Hospital Premium Collection, 4/1/1996-
  • Medical Database, 4/1/1996-
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
  • Periodicals Index Online
  • Professional ProQuest Central, 04/01/1996-
  • ProQuest 5000, 04/01/1996-
  • ProQuest 5000 International, 04/01/1996-
  • ProQuest Central, 04/01/1996-
  • Research Library, 04/01/1996-
  • RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (Repertoire International de Litterature Musicale)
• U.S. National Library of Medicine
  • MEDLINE

Abstracting & Indexing Sources

• Index Medicus (Ceased) (Print)
• MLA Abstracts of Articles in Scholarly Jourals (Ceased) (Print)

Source: Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory.

0.1 (2024)
0.4 (Five-Year Impact Factor)
0.00018 (Eigenfactor™ Score)

Rank in Category (by Journal Impact Factor):
Note: While journals indexed in AHCI and ESCI are receiving a JIF for the first time in June 2023, they will not receive ranks, quartiles, or percentiles until the release of 2023 data in June 2024.
 

© Clarivate Analytics 2025

Published twice a year

Readers include: Scholars in the medical humanities, practitioners, philosophers, historians, writers, and students of literature

Print circulation: 96

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Institute for Bioethics & Health Humanities
The Institute for Bioethics & Health Humanities is committed to moral inquiry, research, teaching, and professional service in medicine and health care. In today's often bewildering world of scientific, technological, cultural, and political changes, medicine faces human problems and possibilities that transcend traditional academic disciplines.

Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database
At NYU School of Medicine: A multi-media annotated bibliographic Web resource of prose, poetry, art and film for teaching and scholarship in the Medical Humanities. Written by a multi-institutional board of editor/annotators.

Roster of Physician Writers
A list of creative writers who also practiced medicine. It includes information such as nationality, dates of birth and death, and a list of written works.

Journal of Medical Humanities
This journal focuses on interdisciplinary inquiry in medicine and medical education. It publishes original essays of a theoretical and critical nature, combining explorations of the traditional humanities--notably literature, history, philosophy, and bioethics--along with related inquiry from sociology, anthropology, pedagogy, and other branches of the social and behavioral sciences that have strong humanistic traditions.

The University of Houston Health Law and Policy Institute
Contains hundreds of annotated links from the Health Law and Policy Institute's Web site to informative Web sites pertaining to health law, health policy, and general health.

Awards and Milestones

The Literature and Medicine Spring 2004 special issue titled "Difference and Identity" was chosen as a runner-up for the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) 2004 Best Special Issue award.

Praise for the Journal

"In medicine's high-tech environment, Literature & Medicine is a tangible way of expressing the totality of needs of both patients and medical staff. As a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal, it fills an important subject domain in a growing and important specialty. At the Mayo Clinic, we have two institutional subscriptions to Literature and Medicine."
J. Michael Homan | Director of Libraries, The Mayo Clinic

"Literature and Medicine? Almost as necessary for a medical education as a stethoscope."
Dannie Abse, M.D. | author of White Coat, Purple Coat and A Poet in the Family

"Literature and Medicine was one of the earliest journals to give a public voice to the pioneers in bioethics. Nobody, it seems to me, has done better since."
Leslie Fiedler, Ph.D. | Samuel L. Clemens Chair Professor, SUNY Buffalo,  author of Freaks and The Tyranny of the Normal

"Literature and Medicine should have a role in the teaching of every medical educator and a place on the shelves of every medical school library."
Larry R. Churchill | Professor and Chair, Social Medicine, author of Rationing Health Care in America and Self-Interest and Universal Health Care

"No medical library can be considered complete without a subscription to the essential journal Literature and Medicine. It is, in its way, as important as the New England Journal of Medicine or Lancet."
Richard Selzer, M.D. | author of Mortal Lessons and Letters to a Young Doctor

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