• Editor’s Foreword
• Michael Blackie

Time lacks punctuation these days. A week passes by in a blur while a single day spent on Zoom feels interminable. How can it be January? Where did summer go? Fall? I come to the composition of this Foreword from deep within this temporal confusion, but certain of my gratitude for the structure Literature and Medicine provides me and the collective effort it requires to bring an issue to publication. Although I struggle to maintain my temporal bearings, when I look back on the past nine or so months there’s evidence of time well spent and rewarding labor.

I am especially pleased to announce additions to the journal’s Editorial Board and to introduce a new feature to its pages. Juliet Mc-Mullin, Interim Dean and Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, and Jaipreet Virdi, Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Delaware, who focuses on medicine, technology, and disability, joined the journal as new Associate Editors. They bring to the journal perspectives and methodologies that will broaden its focus and draw work from scholars who are expanding the fields of literature and medicine and the health humanities. I look forward to working with and learning from them. The new Book Review Editor is Travis Chi Wing Lau, Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College. His belief that book reviews should be opportunities for dialogue, mentoring, and community-building will, I believe, become a model for other journals. Given the growing recognition of comics as a meaningful means of exploring and representing the human dimensions of health and illness, Literature and Medicine now has a Comics Editor—the brilliant MK Czerwiec.

I am equally excited to introduce a new feature to the journal— Front Matter—that provides scholars, artists, and activists opportunities to submit shorter (500-2,000 words) critical-reflective pieces that address current and pressing issues through a focus on an object or theme. These peer-reviewed pieces will appear in each issue. This issue’s inaugural installment focuses on “Breathing,” an essential act we have [End Page vii] seen challenged and threatened by entrenched police brutality and structural racism, a deadly virus and governmental ineptitude. The five selected pieces explore breath, breathing, and breathlessness through critico-poetics, imagism, prose poetry, data analysis, and comics. Despite their different approaches, each author reminds us that breathing, though essential to life, is much more than a physiological necessity.

I will let Johanna Harris, the guest editor for this year’s theme issue on dignity, introduce you to the authors she has assembled and their work. I suspect she shares my newfound appreciation for time’s elusivity. I am most grateful for the collective effort of all the authors, under Anna Fenton-Hathaway’s stalwart guidance, who made this issue possible. Now is the time for all of us to take a deep breath before the next thing. [End Page viii]

• 编者前言
• 迈克尔·布莱基

这些天时间缺乏标点符号。一个星期在模糊中度过，而在 Zoom 上度过的一天却感觉无止境。怎么可能是一月？夏天去哪儿了？落下？我是从这种时间混乱的深处开始撰写本前言的，但我一定要感谢文学和医学为我提供的结构以及它为出版一期所需的集体努力。虽然我努力维持我的时间方向，但当我回顾过去九个月左右的时间时，有证据表明时间花得很好，劳动得到了回报。

我特别高兴地宣布该杂志的编辑委员会增加了新成员，并在其页面上引入了一个新功能。加州大学河滨分校临时院长兼人类学教授 Juliet Mc-Mullin 和特拉华大学历史系助理教授 Jaipreet Virdi，专注于医学、技术和残疾，加入该杂志作为新的副主编。他们为期刊带来了观点和方法，这些观点和方法将扩大其关注点，并吸引正在扩大文学和医学以及健康人文领域的学者的工作。我期待与他们合作并向他们学习。新的书评编辑是凯尼恩学院英语系助理教授 Travis Chi Wing Lau。他认为书评应该是对话、指导、我相信，社区建设将成为其他期刊的典范。鉴于人们越来越认识到漫画是探索和表现健康和疾病的人性层面的一种有意义的手段，文学和医学现在有一位漫画编辑——才华横溢的 MK Czerwiec。

我同样很高兴为该杂志推出一个新功能——Front Matter——它为学者、艺术家和活动家提供了提交较短（500-2,000 字）批判性反思文章的机会，这些文章通过关注一个对象来解决当前和紧迫的问题或主题。这些经过同行评审的文章将出现在每一期中。本期的第一期文章重点关注“呼吸”，这是我们拥有的一项基本行为[End Page vii]他们受到根深蒂固的警察暴行和结构性种族主义、致命病毒和政府无能的挑战和威胁。这五部精选作品通过批评诗学、意象主义、散文诗、数据分析和漫画来探索呼吸、呼吸和呼吸困难。尽管他们的方法不同，但每位作者都提醒我们，呼吸虽然对生命必不可少，但不仅仅是生理上的必需品。

我会让今年关于尊严的主题问题的客座编辑约翰娜哈里斯向您介绍她收集的作者和他们的工作。我怀疑她和我对时间的难以捉摸的新认识一样。我非常感谢所有作者的集体努力，在 Anna Fenton-Hathaway 的坚定指导下，使这个问题成为可能。现在是我们所有人在下一件事之前深呼吸的时候了。【尾页八】