title: Hopeless Cases: Queer Chronicities and Gertrude Stein's "Melanctha".
abstract: For this contribution to the special issue on "Mapping Queer Bioethics," the author offers a reflection on the nature of the literary, written word as the ethically fraught site of queer bioethics. By invoking the historical tendencies and tropes of the clinical case history alongside a seminal text by Gertrude Stein, the author at once asks if we should liberate a queer bioethics from biomedical discourse via mainstream narrative; or if we should see this strategy as unavoidably housed in narrative forms of storytelling because it echoes the tropes and stakes of the clinical, pathologized case history as regards queer sensibilities.
authors.affiliation: a Department of English , University of California, Davis , Davis California , USA.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Freeman
mesh_terms: D026688:Bioethical Issues; D005260:Female; D006716:Homosexuality / Q000941:ethics / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008091:Literature; D008297:Male
keywords: Bioethics; Gertrude Stein; LGBT health; case history; eugenics; literary studies; medical humanities; narrative; queer studies; race