Globalism and Gendering Cancer: Tracking the Trope of Oncogenic Women from the Us to Kenya

This book connects a rhetorical examination of medical and public health policy documents with a humanistic investigation of cultural texts to uncover the link between gendered representations of health and cancer.

The author argues that in western biomedical contexts cancer is considered a women’s disease and their bodies are treated as inherently oncogenic or cancer-producing, which leads to biomedical practices that adversely impact their bodily autonomy. She examines how these biases traverse national boundaries by examining the transmission of biomedical cancer practices from the US and international organizations to Kenya.

This book is suited to scholars and students working in the fields of Rhetorics of Health and Medicine, Medical Humanities and Gender Studies. It is also of interest to medical professionals and readers interested in globalism and global health.

Miriam O’Kane Mara is Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University. Her research interests include medical and health discourses, Irish literature & film, and food studies. In all of these contexts, her work examines the intersections between landscapes, bodies, texts, and discourses. Publications appear in Technical Communication Quarterly, New Hibernia Review, Feminist Formations, and Irish Studies Review.