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Special Forum Editors' Introduction

Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle has been read as a critique of unfettered capitalism in the urban space of Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century. This essay argues that this capitalist critique may gain further depth when read through the intersection between transnational American studies and medical humanities. Through the perspective of the Lithuanian character Jurgis Rudkus, the narrative turns on its head xenophobic claims of immigrants as a health menace to the US American nation. In so doing, it engages the field of medicine in two significant ways. It counters the claim that immigrants have no knowledge of hygiene by looking at white tables through immigrant eyes; and it critiques the fact that the US medical system has become inhumane in its increasing economization. Reading Sinclair’s novel in dialogue with historical studies of migration and contagion at the beginning of the twentieth century as well as with other naturalistic texts such as Frank Norris’s The Octopus, I suggest that The Jungle anticipates current debates about health care and health justice, as they have recently been addressed in Barack Obama’s autobiography A Promised Land.

Excerpt from Developing Transnational American Studies, edited by Nadja Gernalzick and Heike C. Spickermann

One of the central challenges educators face today, especially in higher education, is the gap between warranted (domain-specific) knowledge and the prior beliefs students hold about certain concepts and phenomena (preconceptions). In the Internet age, students often self-directedly acquire knowledge from an increasingly large number of contradictory sources of information, many of which are biased or untrustworthy. Based on existing research, the study presented here explores the role of narratives in the context of student learning. We draw on an empirical study aimed at assessing students' decision-making, the role of knowledge and belief, and students' narrative competence. The performed qualitative analysis of cognitive interviews in which university students reflected on their information-processing and reasoning indicates that narratives can be central to unsettling the dichotomy between knowledge and belief. Students need to be equipped with the narrative competence to be aware of how narrative framing and metaphors used in texts guide their reasoning and decision-making not only at the cognitive but also at the affective level. After conducting a qualitative analysis of student's answers, we discuss potentials for using narrative methodologies in instructional interventions and fostering students' narrative competence in the higher education classroom.

This article investigates the phenomenon of the granfluencer at the intersection between age and gender. At first sight, the granfluencer seems to work against the notion that old age is inevitably accompanied by decay and a lack of productiveness. Yet, as "grandparents" become influencers, it seems that productiveness can be described only in terms of a neoliberal market economy. Taking the social media persona of Baddie Winkle as a case in point, I suggest that Winkle can be seen as both confirming and subverting assumptions of age at one and the same time. Drawing on the work of Margaret Morganroth Gullette as well as Susan Sontag's "The Double Standard of Aging," this article reads Winkle as a potential example of "Successful Aging" and asks whether there are ways of growing old beyond the dictates of neoliberalism. At the same time, Winkle can be seen to disprove assumptions of the alleged unattractiveness of older women by openly flaunting her sexuality. This may earn her clicks, and at the same time makes us see age (and gender) in an entirely new light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]