Interdisciplinary medical humanities research on the prostate - a constant torment?

Recently at Linköping University, colleagues and I wrapped up a 7 year, 9 person, interdisciplinary, medical humanities research project about the prostate. It was originally titled ’A Constant Torment: Tracing the Discursive Contours of the Aging Prostate’. The title comes from the fact that the aging prostate is sometimes referred to (and sometimes behaves) as a constant torment. However, there were many times during the course of our research that I suspected the title could actually refer to our collaboration. During the run of this research, we were challenged by diverse ontological assumptions, varying methodological traditions, disciplinary clashes and career stages that required widely different outputs to take the next step forward. We left the project slightly bruised but still friends. We also learned a lot about the prostate along the way, and produced, among other publications, the book: A Cultural Biography of the Prostate (MIT Press 2021). This talk will present our results, but also discuss the joys and tribulations of participating in an interdisciplinary project like ours.