The Manual of Disaster: Creativity, Preparedness, and Writing the Emergency Room

Abstract

This essay offers a critical examination of creativity discourse at the intersection of two discipli-nary fields: health and humanities. In contrast to creativity’s longstanding associations with mak-ing, imitation, or invention, we examine the relatively recent emergence of what we call creativi-ty’s preparatory capacity, particularly within critical discussions of healthcare and illness narratives. Working with fictional representations of the emergency room in physician-writer Jay Baruch’s short story collection Fourteen Stories: Doctors, Patients, and Other Strangers (2007), we identify how particular narrative techniques are revealed in a range of emergency scenarios—both within and beyond the fictional setting—and what such deployments of creativity might signal for the future of literary studies more broadly.