Intersex Studies and the Health and Medical Humanities

Recognizing the value of interdisciplinarity and drawing on literature, art, history, ethics and philosophy, this book brings together scholars and activists to inform medical practice and education related to bodies designated intersex. This volume celebrates interdisciplinarity and, crucially, illustrates how it can be harnessed to address the often-troubling co-opting and misunderstanding of intersex-specific concerns within existing humanities discourses. It provides an exciting cross-section of the interdisciplinary work that is emerging in the newly crystalizing study of intersex. The contributors use vital humanities-based approaches that focus on how we can utilize language, storytelling, and history to change how intersex individuals are diagnosed and treated. It shows us how essential it is to take advantage of the wealth of knowledge offered by both medicine and the humanities when considering how we might improve the lives of those diagnosed intersex. Importantly, it challenges us to transform approaches to treating those diagnosed as intersex and to reform understandings of what it means to be intersex.