An Investigation of Mutual Interactions between the Practice of Chinese Medicine and Biomedicine

This dissertation research project traces the production of two of the first English-language acupuncture atlases in the 20th century. These atlases highlight the work of standardizing Traditional Chinese Medicine to mirror western medicine, and thus legitimate its practice, while simultaneously mapping invisible meridians that fall outside the regular purview of evidence-based Western medicine. In addition to engaging in archival research, the project will also involve conducting a limited number of interviews with individuals affiliated with the production and circulation of acupuncture atlases in the United Kingdom, the United States, and China. Besides publishing the results of this research in scholarly journals, the visual and textual components of this project will serve as material in documentary filmmaking to reach beyond the confines of academia and engage with broader concerns in health care. The author has extensive experience in digital media that will facilitate using the results of this research to make short films that will contribute a global, non-western, human-centered perspective of medicine to a broader audience.