Imagining Health
216 pages, 6 x 9
8 illus.
Paperback
Release Date:12 Jan 2026
ISBN:9781625349118
Hardcover
Release Date:12 Jan 2026
ISBN:9781625349125
Imagining Health
Medicine, Social Protest, and Modern American Literature
By Ira Halpern
University of Massachusetts Press
A surprising look at how American writers envision a more equitable healthcare system
In the United States, a deep suspicion of professional medical expertise is becoming increasingly prominent. Meanwhile, many arguments for health justice take a highly critical view of medical authority, even rejecting it entirely. In the early to mid-twentieth century, alternatively, as medicine rapidly professionalized, Americans came to hold the medical establishment in a particularly high regard, while many saw how it could play a crucial role in progressive politics. In this period, technologies developed, specializations grew, and medical education became standardized. With this process came inequities, as marginalized populations struggled to access the highest levels of care. Literary writers confronting social ills through their work included critiques of this new system in their writing, Ira Halpern argues. Without abandoning professional medicine, they called for alternative systems of care that could better serve diverse populations.
Halpern examines the work of several writers—including Robert Herrick, Wallace Thurman, Frank Slaughter, Charles Chesnutt, Walter White, Ralph Ellison, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Upton Sinclair, Stephen Crane, and Edith Wharton—to demonstrate how American writing from this period embedded a critical look at healthcare within other elements of progressive politics, from racial protest and women’s rights to disability justice and counter-capitalist viewpoints. Placing this writing into historical context, in terms of medical and scientific developments as well as traditions of social protest, Halpern reveals the efforts of these writers to envision better alternative trajectories for a quickly evolving medical establishment that left too many Americans without reliable care.
In the United States, a deep suspicion of professional medical expertise is becoming increasingly prominent. Meanwhile, many arguments for health justice take a highly critical view of medical authority, even rejecting it entirely. In the early to mid-twentieth century, alternatively, as medicine rapidly professionalized, Americans came to hold the medical establishment in a particularly high regard, while many saw how it could play a crucial role in progressive politics. In this period, technologies developed, specializations grew, and medical education became standardized. With this process came inequities, as marginalized populations struggled to access the highest levels of care. Literary writers confronting social ills through their work included critiques of this new system in their writing, Ira Halpern argues. Without abandoning professional medicine, they called for alternative systems of care that could better serve diverse populations.
Halpern examines the work of several writers—including Robert Herrick, Wallace Thurman, Frank Slaughter, Charles Chesnutt, Walter White, Ralph Ellison, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Upton Sinclair, Stephen Crane, and Edith Wharton—to demonstrate how American writing from this period embedded a critical look at healthcare within other elements of progressive politics, from racial protest and women’s rights to disability justice and counter-capitalist viewpoints. Placing this writing into historical context, in terms of medical and scientific developments as well as traditions of social protest, Halpern reveals the efforts of these writers to envision better alternative trajectories for a quickly evolving medical establishment that left too many Americans without reliable care.
Imagining Health is a compelling, nuanced, well-researched engagement with works of the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries that acknowledge professional medicine’s expertise and, at the same time, expose health care inequities and injustices. Halpern does an excellent job of placing his argument in the larger context of past scholarship, citing the many works that have made important contributions and from many different perspectives and methodologies. His selection of literary texts is excellent, and the readings thoughtful and graceful.’—Stephanie Browner, author of Profound Science and Elegant Literature: Imagining Doctors in Nineteenth-Century America
‘In an era when trusting medical advice is highly politicized, framed too often as the antithesis of engaged critique, Imagining Health recovers a tradition of literary realism that advanced health equity by holding progressive optimism accountable. Halpern makes a significant contribution to multiple fields, especially American literary realism, the history of medicine, disability studies, and bioethics.’—Don James McLaughlin, University of Tulsa
Imagining Health is a compelling, nuanced, well-researched engagement with works of the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries that acknowledge professional medicine’s expertise and, at the same time, expose health care inequities and injustices. Halpern does an excellent job of placing his argument in the larger context of past scholarship, citing the many works that have made important contributions and from many different perspectives and methodologies. His selection of literary texts is excellent, and the readings thoughtful and graceful.’—Stephanie Browner, author of Profound Science and Elegant Literature: Imagining Doctors in Nineteenth-Century America
‘In an era when trusting medical advice is highly politicized, framed too often as the antithesis of engaged critique, Imagining Health recovers a tradition of literary realism that advanced health equity by holding progressive optimism accountable. Halpern makes a significant contribution to multiple fields, especially American literary realism, the history of medicine, disability studies, and bioethics.’—Don James McLaughlin, University of Tulsa
IRA HALPERN is visiting assistant professor in English at the College of New Jersey. His scholarship has appeared in Literature and Medicine and American Literature.
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