ABSTRACT
What would a global health humanities look like? While “global” and “health” and “humanities” each invoke different intellectual genealogies and concerns, this chapter approaches non-English language sources to cross disciplinary boundaries with the case of xin 心. As a noun and a verb, xin 心 could translate as thinking and/or thoughts, feeling and/or heart, cognition and/or brain. Many scholars have closely examined these aspects of xin 心 in historical, literary, religious, ethnographic, and philosophical contexts. Meanwhile, this chapter further connects xin 心with histories of health, embodiment, and the imagination. It combines the folk etymology of xin 心with elements of philology to introduce a version of global health humanities using what I call “medical poetics.” In other words, medical poetics is an exercise in ethics and aesthetics. Here, I use the poetics of xin 心 to explore cosmologies of health and healing that transgress genres of academic writing. I introduce the ways in which my work in the digital humanities has dealt with the practical challenges of representing everyday experiences of xin 心 on film.
