Research Guides: HLTH 398B: Senior Seminar in Health Studies (HC): Cancer in Art and Literature

Cancer in literary sources

Consult the texts below for an understanding of how literary authors have engaged with the topic of cancer. The last title in this list is a "biography of cancer" that takes on the subject from a cultural and historical, as well as biological, perspective.

For more literary texts that engage with the topic of cancer, you can consult the library catalog. Search the MLA Bibliography, a database of sources in the humanities, if you are interested in identifying scholarly articles focusing on the intersection of literary studies and narratives of cancer.

Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; Nicholas Bethell (Translator); David F. Burg (Translator)
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ISBN: 9780374534714
Publication Date: 2015
The Russian Nobelist's semiautobiographical novel set in a Soviet cancer ward shortly after Stalin's death.
Without by Donald Hall
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ISBN: 039588408X
Publication Date: 1998
You might expect the fact of dying--the dying of a beloved wife and fellow poet--to make for a bleak and lonely tale. But Donald Hall's poignant and courageous poetry, facing that dread fact, involves us all: the magnificent, humorous, and gifted woman, Jane Kenyon, who suffered and died; the doctors and nurses who tried but failed to save her; the neighbors, friends, and relatives who grieved for her; the husband who sat by her while she lived and afterward sat in their house alone with his pain, self-pity, and fury; and those of us who till now had nothing to do with it.
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
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ISBN: 9781439107959
Publication Date: 2010
The Emperor of All Maladies is a profoundly humane "biography" of cancer--from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

Cancer in film

You can search Tripod for films about cancer (and other health issues) by entering cancer as a keyword and using the facets on the left hand side to narrow to item by "Resource Type" and "Genre."

For example, these are results from a search about breast cancer, limited to biographical film.

Cancer in other visual arts

ARTstor
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A digital library that provides access to thousands of digital images derived from a variety of museum, library and archival collections. You can use keyword searches to find photographs and other representations of various types of cancer. TIP: If you you search only for "cancer," you will have to sift through a lot of images of astrological crabs! Try searching for a particular type.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) This link opens in a new window
The DPLA allows you to search millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Each record links to the original object on the library or other content provider's website. It includes primary source material from government publishing, medical organizations, and many other relevant bodies. You can find educational slides, ephemera, photos, x-rays, promotional materials, and much more. Again, try searching for a particular kind of cancer.