By Dr Fiona Johnstone The medical humanities have recently taken a ‘visual turn’. Medical schools run modules aimed at increasing students’ visual literacy through exposure to artworks, and artists are engaged to teach ‘soft’ skills such as empathy. Art therapy is enjoying a renaissance, and the arts are celebrated for their ability to promote and […]
Month: July 2018
Global Health Humanities: A New Avenue For Medical Students
This blog post is from Mariam Ahmed and Farhiya Omar, both medical students at St George’s, University of London. Rewind a few years, to life before medical school. Our intentions for being doctors were first and foremost to benefit and help fellow humans in their times of most need by being compassionate souls and embracing […]
Pilgrims’ Progress: Need for a Humanitarian Mass-Gathering Policy
In this blog, Kesavan Rajasekharan Nayar and his colleagues discuss the need for an international, multi-dimensional mass-gathering policy, using the case study of a mass-gathering phenomenon for religious purposes in Kerala, India which draws about 45 million people annually. Mass-gathering in such huge numbers poses considerable challenges in terms of communicable and non-communicable disease surveillance, […]
CFP: Metaphoric Stammers and Embodied Speakers
Metaphoric Stammers and Embodied Speakers: Expanding the Borders of Dysfluency Studies, Humanities Institute, University College Dublin, 12 October, 2018. Extended deadline for submissions: 30 July 2018. Keynote speaker: Chris Eagle, Emory University, Centre for the Study of Human Health (Dysfluencies: On Speech Disorders in Modern Literature, 2014; Talking Normal: Literature, Speech Disorders, and Disability, ed. […]
At a Closer Look Nobody is Normal
Like Crazy, (Paolo Virzi, Italy, 2016) Reviewed by Franco Ferrarini, Gastroenterologist and Film Reviewer Beatrice (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and Donatella (Micaela Ramazzotti) live in a Mental Care Health Home. The former is an upper class mythomaniac, a compulsive liar with fantastical stories, whilst the latter comes from a lower socio-economic class and suffers from severe […]
In Shock
Rana Awdish, In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope (2018), New York: Bantam Press, 272 pp, £14.99. Reviewed by Róisín King, Trinity College Dublin Aptly stated by Ed Pellegrino, ‘medicine is the most humane of the sciences, the most scientific of the humanities’. This implies an essential balance […]
Revisiting Dunkirk: A Call to Action
Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017, United Kingdom) Reviewed by Sanaa Hyder, MSc. Health Psychology Dunkirk opens with these words: “The enemy has driven the British and French armies to the sea. Trapped at Dunkirk, they await their fate. Hoping for deliverance. For a miracle.” This succinctly captures the sentiment of a beautifully-rendered war film portraying the […]
Diary of a Bipolar Explorer
Lucy Newlyn, Diary of a Bipolar Explorer (2018), Oxford: Signal Books, 232pp, £9.99. Reviewed by Neil Vickers Lucy Newlyn was until recently Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford. She is one of the world’s leading authorities on English Romantic poetry. She has published two collections of poetry: Ginnel (2005) and Earth’s Almanac (2015). […]
‘The Gut-Brain Axis’: Cultural and Historical Perspectives
Report by Dr Manon Mathias, University of Glasgow This two-day workshop held at the University of Glasgow, 4–5 May 2018, brought together 35 delegates from Australia, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Norway, the UK, and the USA. Participants represented a wide range of institutions, career levels, and disciplines. The aim of the event was to consider the […]
Trippy Yoga: A Short History of Psychedelics and Flexible Minds and Bodies in the 1960s
Today’s blog post comes from Dr Lucas Richert, who is a Lecturer in the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, University of Strathclyde and Matthew DeCloedt, a PhD student in Constitutional Law at CEU. Americans were receptive to new thinking and practices in the 1960s. People mobilized. A human rights movement […]