Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints

This special issue explores three core questions:

• Why did health messaging develop in the Philippines? Who produced and consumed it? When, where, and how?

• In what way did health messaging in the Philippines contribute to the emergence of a new “modern” visual economy of health, disease, and medicine?

• To what extent are health messaging practices today rooted in the colonial and postcolonial past?

Through our interdisciplinary exploration of these questions, we hope to significantly advance our understanding of the histories of medicine, colonialism, race, visual culture, knowledge, power, and health politics in the Philippines.

We invite scholars of all career stages and from across the humanities and the social sciences working on the history of health, disease, and medicine in the Philippines to submit abstracts for consideration in a special issue with Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints on the topic of health messaging. Papers may consider a wide range of topics and time periods. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Infectious disease control

• Maternal health and infant care

• Nutrition

• Vaccination

• Sports

• Mental health

• Hygiene and sanitation

• Smoking, drinking, drugs

• Toxicity and poisons

• Pollution

• Animals/multispecies health

• Environmental health

• Nongovernmental organizations

Paper proposals that focus exclusively on health advertisements will not be considered. Selected participants will be invited to join an online workshop to further discuss and develop their papers before submission. Please note that papers will go through peer review individually before publication.

The special issue will be guest coedited by Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk (Institute of History, Leiden University) and Nicolo Paolo Ludovice (Department of History, University of Hong Kong). Prospective manuscript contributors should submit abstracts (approximately 250 words long) and brief author biographies in a combined Word document. Materials must be submitted by 15 September 2023 to [email protected] and [email protected] with the subject line, “PSHEV Abstract Submission: [corresponding last name/s].”

Contributors will receive feedback by 29 September 2023. Contributors of accepted abstracts will be asked to submit manuscripts (approximately 6,000 words) by 22 December 2023. These will form the basis of the workshop in January 2024.

For inquiries, please contact:

Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk ([email protected])

Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute for History, Leiden University

Nicolo Paolo P. Ludovice ([email protected])

Lecturer, Department of History, The University of Hong Kong