History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals (HoPP) invites submissions for upcoming themed issues (https://hopp.uwpress.org/page/callforpapers)
Upcoming themed issue topics (see below for more information about each):
- Drugs, Pharma, and the American State
- Minds and Medicines
We welcome contributions from historians as well as scholars working in adjacent disciplines, including STS, sociology, anthropology, legal studies, and related areas. Unless otherwise specified, submissions may address any geographical region or historical period. HoPP welcomes submissions from both established and emerging scholars.
Potential contributors are encouraged to interpret these themes broadly. We are particularly interested in work that situates pharmaceuticals, medicines, and drugs within larger questions such as those involving power, regulation, consumerism, activism, identity, inequality, and everyday experience.
If you have a manuscript that fits one of these themes, you are invited to submit it through our submission manager between now and September 1. Scholars working on projects in progress are also welcome to submit abstracts for consideration by July 15. The editorial team will review abstract submissions on a rolling basis and follow up with additional guidance and potential full submission timelines. Please indicate in your cover letter which themed issue you are responding to.
Visit hopp.uwpress.org/page/info/submissions for more information about the journal and our submission guidelines. The submissions portal can be found at https://hopp.msubmit.net/ .
Theme details:
Drugs, Pharma, and the American State
At the moment of America’s 250th celebration, we feel it is an appropriate time to celebrate, challenge, and reexamine the history and cultural politics of drug development and regulation within the United States. Drugs and policies governing them are rapidly evolving. HSS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy challenged the role of SSRIs in modern society; President Donald Trump issued two Executive Orders that impacted access to, and the regulation of, cannabis and the psychedelic drug categories; new classes and old classes of pharmaceuticals products, such as GLP-1s and reproductive medicines, generated significant debate at the state and federal levels. Because of cost and frictions, many Americans are seeking out unapproved and off-patent medicines through social media advertising, which itself remains unregulated. Lack of trust in mainstream medicine and lack of access both drive consumers to seek out alternative remedies.
This themed issue seeks to interrogate broad debates over state power and the regulation of substances shaping American citizens’ bodies and minds. We are particularly interested in scholarship that explores how pharmaceutical drugs and pharmacy practice have been shaped by law, bureaucracy, expertise, activism, commerce, and public debate. Possible topics include systems of drug approval and regulation, pharmaceutical advertising, professional boundaries and gate-keeping, roles and boundaries of health professions, drug (de)criminalization and scheduling, innovation and access, relationships between industry and government, and systems of pharmaceutical regulation.
Minds and Medicines
More than 1 billion people are living with mental health disorders, according to new data released by the World Health Organization (WHO), with conditions such as anxiety and depression inflicting immense human and economic tolls. These WHO findings also noted that there are significant gaps in addressing mental health conditions across the globe.
At the same time, the modern mind is mediated through the production and sale of brain-altering chemicals, often right from the pharmacy shelf. Whether by sipping your morning cup of coffee or taking your daily ADHD medication, or even when doomscrolling through advertisements on your phone for various consumer health products, these substances saturate daily life.
In the realm of pharmacy and pharmaceuticals, current herbal or chemical understandings developed in the 19th century, which saw the rise of scientific pharmacology and molecularization – as different natural compounds began to be isolated, studied, and synthesized in labs. In the realm of business, multiple corporations have sought to target the brain in precise ways, what historian David Courtwright has called “limbic capitalism.”
This themed issue explores the historical relationships between pharmacy and pharmaceuticals and psychiatry, mental health, and emotion and perception broadly conceived. We welcome submissions examining how pharmacy and pharmacists have shaped the mind, especially in the provision of treatment and the production of medicines themselves; everyday experiences of consuming varied products; constructions of selfhood, distress, productivity, and normalcy. Possible topics include psychopharmaceuticals, antidepressants and anxiolytics, addiction medicine, psychedelics, sleep and stimulant drugs, psychopharmaceutical advertising, patient activism, neurochemistry and identity, and the intersections of psychiatric medication with race, gender, disability, and sexuality.
