In Hospital Land USA, Wendy Simonds analyzes the wide-reaching powers of medicalization: the dynamic processes by which medical authorities, institutions, and ideologies impact our everyday experiences, culture, and social life. Simonds documents her own Hospital Land adventures and draws on a wide range of U.S. cultural representations ? from memoirs to medical mail, from hospital signs to disaster movies ? in order to urge critical thinking about conventional notions of care, health, embodiment, identity, suffering, and mortality.

Introduction : collaborating with the dead -- Chet goes to chemo : the semiotics and sadism of the medical industrial complex -- More adventures in hospital land : an alternative medical history -- Sick stories : medicalized media -- Conclusion : instead of a happy ending.