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Ira Halpern

Picture of Ira Halpern, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellow

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellow

Ira Halpern’s recent research investigates the injustice of illness and the ways literary writers, reformers, doctors, and patients have addressed it by reimagining and intervening in the medical system. Halpern’s teaching focuses on these themes,among others, on topics ranging from American Literature to Medical Memoir to Queer Literature/Queer Lives. He is the author of Imagining Health: Medicine, Social Protest, and Modern American Literature (The University of Massachusetts Press 2026).

Book
Imagining Health: Medicine, Social Protest, and Modern American Literature (The University of Massachusetts Press in Jan 2026)

Peer-Reviewed Articles
“Diagnosing Desire: Imaginative Experiments with Sexuality and the Nerves.” Literature and Medicine, 41.1 (2023)
“Health Care Fictions: The Business of Medicine and Modern U.S Literature,” American Literature 93.4 (2021)

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