In the vein of Anton Chekhov, Leigh E. Rich has followed two passions in life: medicine and literature.
She has a doctorate in health and behavioral sciences and a master’s degree in cultural and medical anthropology and is currently a professor in the health humanities in Savannah, GA. She teaches courses in bioethics, health law and policy, social theory, and an interdisciplinary special topics “Literature and Medicine,” “Medicine at the Movies,” and “TV’s Take on Medicine.”
Her research focuses on bioethics and the body, health-related law, visual media, gender, the philosophy of medicine, and qualitative methodologies.
In journal articles and book chapters, she has examined Foucauldian and Heideggerian perspectives on American medicine in House M.D. (published in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine and Film and Philosophy), feminism and the ethics of care in the Back to the Future trilogy (in Back to the Future and Philosophy), hyperrationality and gender in Hannibal (published in Film and Philosophy), The Orville through the lens of Jacques Lacan (in Exploring The Orville), propaganda and “Men Against Fire” in Black Mirror (in Philosophical Reflections on Black Mirror), and informed consent as a Habermasian practice and the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air (both published in The 21st Century and Its Discontents).
For six years, she served as editor in chief of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry.
For seven years, she hosted three radio programs on Savannah’s WRUU-LP 107.5 FM: Beyond the Liner Notes, Listening to Literature, and The Common Good: An Exploration of Health, Law, and Ethics.
A longtime “culture critic” and the former vice president of the Colorado Press Women, she is an award-winning writer of editorials, news and feature stories, and reviews for niche publications and has worked or studied in Russia, Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, and Australia.
She is the author of the play Le Bateau (produced as a fundraiser for the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth in 1993) and is presently working on a second play, The Asylum: A Play About a Sofa, and an academic book focusing on bodies and biotechnology.
Book Chapters by Leigh E. Rich
Plays by Leigh E. Rich
