The proposed collection invites interdisciplinary analysis of the phenomenon of “psychosomatic” illness as it is (mis)understood in expert and popular culture. Possible themes or topics include:

• the persistence of mind-body dualism in both expert and lay concepts of illness and wellness
• the connection between stress and illness in popular culture
• the struggle to establish scientific, social, and cultural legitimacy for controversial diagnoses such as chronic fatigue syndrome, post-treatment lyme disease syndrome, fibromyalgia (ME)
• the evolution of syndromes and the role of cultural and scientific context
• the role of gender, race, and class in expert and lay constructions of “psychosomatic” illness and patient identity
• the representation of psychosomatic and/or contested illness in self-help and wellness programs, magazines, and websites
• stereotypes and stigmatization of hypochondria, “hysteria,” or malingering in medical and popular culture
• the relative invisibility of psychosomatic and/or contested illness in fictional narrative (from literary fiction to medical melodramas on tv)
• the role of medical narrative/narrative medicine in mediating provider-patient conflict about medically unexplained or somatic symptoms and controversial diagnoses

Essays should be interdisciplinary in scope and engaging to a diverse, non-specialist audience. Please send 500-word proposals and a CV to Carol-Ann Farkas by February 29 2016. We have a contract with the publisher and are trying to round out the collection. The deadline for the draft manuscript is June 16 2016.