Contested Healing: Experiments in Graphic Ethnography of Ankylosing Spondylitis

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dc.contributorDay, Iyko
dc.contributorThorner, Sabra
dc.contributor.advisorLuce, Jacquelyne
dc.contributor.authorRao-Herel, Anjali
dc.date.accessioned2022-07-01T18:03:22Z
dc.date.available2022-07-01T18:03:22Z
dc.date.gradyear2022en_US
dc.date.issued2022-07-01en
dc.description.abstractThrough graphic ethnography, I analyze and represent the way individuals experience, feel, and embody the unique temporality and liminality of Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS) as a chronic, degenerative condition. To do so, I draw on my research of individuals with AS in online public spaces and nine long-form, semi-structured interviews. This work, in all its components, addresses overarching conversations about chronic illness and people’s use of holistic treatments in the face of the biomedical push for pharmaceuticals. AS is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease marked by inflammation of the sacroiliac joints, spine, ribs, and eyes, and vertebrae fusion. It often presents in adolescence and throughout early adulthood and manifests in periods of pain and periods of remission. I use digitally-produced graphics to de-center and complicate the overwhelming hold of biomedicine’s normative narratives of the “best” and “correct” modes of treatment and care, evoking an affective response to narratives of AS and experiences of chronic illness embodiment. As a generative form of analysis and representation, graphic ethnography allows me to unearth the way people’s engagements and investments in holistic healing generate newfound control, agency, and power that biomedicine otherwise strips from them in light of an AS diagnosis.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipGender Studiesen_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10166/6372
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.rights.restrictedpublicen_US
dc.subjectankylosing spondylitisen_US
dc.subjectchronic illnessen_US
dc.subjectdisability studiesen_US
dc.subjecthealth humanitiesen_US
dc.subjectautoimmunityen_US
dc.subjectmedical anthropologyen_US
dc.subjectbiomedicineen_US
dc.subjectchronic painen_US
dc.subjectholistic healingen_US
dc.titleContested Healing: Experiments in Graphic Ethnography of Ankylosing Spondylitisen_US
dc.typeThesis
mhc.degreeUndergraduateen_US
mhc.institutionMount Holyoke College

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