Statement of Purpose

Dósis is an online blog and magazine dedicated to exploring the intersection of medical humanities and social justice. The web-only publication offers three issues annually featuring essays, commentary, and reviews clustered around a particular theme. In addition, the blog will run news and notes on relevant current trends in medical humanities and social justice.

About Us

Who are we? Brandy Schillace, founding editor, works in public engagement and outreach for museums, inviting a diverse audience to see themselves as partners  in a wider community. She also serves as Editor for BMJ’s Medical Humanities journal. The remaining staff come from varied backgrounds, but each of us have a commitment to issues of access.

Our authors and audience? We welcome submissions from students, volunteers, social justice warriors, queer theorists, public health policymakers, teachers, scholars, practitioners, patients, artists and Jane Q Public whose research or experience speaks to the relationship between medical humanities and social justice. We welcome every background, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation and creed. Though we welcome academic inquiry, we intend this magazine for a general reading public.  Contributors do not need an institutional affiliation or degree  to be considered.

What we offer? We created this platform to provide a space for voices not always heard in academic medical humanities, and further, to bring the discussion beyond the university and into lived experience. While Dósis is currently unable to pay its contributors, writers are given a byline and retain copyright and republication rights to all of their content. We welcome you, also, to be part of how we shape this project and our process.

Submissions

Dósis puts out three calls annually for contributions to our Winter/Spring, Summer, and Fall issues. These calls outline the theme for a given issue and provide specific deadlines for essay and commentary pitches as well as suggestions for works to review. Read Dósis online.

Dósis considers three types of submissions:

Essays are between 1000-1500 words in length and grounded in the writer’s area of scholarly expertise, work in the field, or experience as an activist. Essays may also be in conversation or interview format with a scholar or practitioner.

Commentary pieces are 300-500 words in length and are more informal opinion pieces that speak to current events and the issue’s specific theme. Commentary may also be reflection on an event such as a conference session or public lecture that is relevant to the issue’s focus.

Reviews are expected to be 500-750 words in length, providing an overview of the work, its goals, and the reviewer’s estimation of its success.

Cover Art submissions in all visual art formats are considered.

CFP: Sickness and Health in the Era of Trump

The editors of the online magazine Dósis: medical humanities + social justice — a new project of Med Hum | Daily Dose — are seeking contributors for their debut issue: “Sickness and Health in the Era of Trump.” Since January 2017 we have seen the steady erosion of our national — and international — well-being under the GOP-led government. We have also seen citizens and residents in all corners of our nation mounting a steady resistance against the erasure of progress made in the eight years of President Obama’s administration. Progress toward better access to healthcare, environmental sustainability, de-escalation of violence, and the recognition of human rights for all people living within and without our national borders. Dósis seeks essays, commentary, reviews, and visual art that speaks to both destruction and resistance in the era of Trump.

• What does your research have to say about this moment in our history?
• How has your work been (re)shaped by the era of Trump?
• How have you, and the communities to which you belong, responded to the challenges of 2017?
• Is there a scholar or activist you would like to interview about sickness and health in the era of Trump?
• What works of fiction or nonfiction, film or television, do you think speak to this moment?

Pitches for essays, commentary, and reviews will be considered on a rolling basis between now and 1 November 2017. First drafts will be due to the editor by 15 December 2017, editorial feedback will be provided by 15 January 2018 and final drafts will be due by 1 February 2018.  

To pitch essays and commentary, please use our query form or contact our managing editor Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook at submissions@medhumdosis.com.

To pitch reviews of fiction, nonfiction, digital resources, and film/television works, please use our query form or contact our review editor Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook at reviews@medhumdosis.com.

We also seek cover art! If you are a visual artist, or know artists whose work may speak to this theme, please submit a reference image of your work to our managing editor Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook at submissions@medhumdosis.com.

And finally, we have a Patreon! As we relaunch Dósis as a blog and web magazine dedicated to marginalized voices in the medical humanities, we are committed to paying our contributors.  Patreon support will allow us to begin paying our contributors for their work while off-setting current operating costs, currently funded out of pocket by our editor-in-chief. Each successive goal in our Patreon campaign will offset a little more of our operating expenses while giving contributors a raise! We want to ensure Dósis a sustainable future.

Become a patron of Dósis for as little as $1.00/month and help us pay our writers!