The Birkbeck Medical Humanities reading group aims to create a space in which academics, clinicians and students can come together to explore key readings, ideas and materials in the field of medical humanities. Our endeavour is to find ways of talking across the different disciplines of the humanities and medicine, and we welcome participation […]
Category: Book Reviews
The Reading Room: Upcoming workshop on ageing
Medical Humanities and Ageing, 29/06/2015 An initiative of the CHCI Medical Humanities Network Program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) Location: Old Committee Room, King’s Building, King’s College London, Strand Campus, Strand, London WC2R 2LSDate: Monday 29th June 2015 The Centre for the Humanities and Health, […]
The Reading Room: A review of ‘Health Humanities’
Health Humanities Paul Crawford, Brian Brown, Charley Baker, Victoria Tischler and Brian Abrams (London: Palgrave, 2015) Reviewed by Dr Maria Vaccarella, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Medical Humanities, Centre for the Humanities and Health, King’s College London In her foundational study Manifestoes: Provocations of the Modern (1999), Janet Lyon explains that “the manifesto both generates and […]
Book Review: The Development of Narrative Practices in Medicine c.1960-2000
The Development of Narrative Practices in Medicine c.1960-2000 Jones E M, Tansey E M. (eds) (2015) Wellcome Witnesses to Contemporary Medicine, vol. 52. London: Queen Mary University of London. Reviewed by Ben Chisnall, Medical Student, King’s College London, UK “Narrative medicine” is a term used to refer to a number of analytical and interpretative […]
The Reading Room: The Wellcome Book Prize
The shortlist for the Wellcome Book Prize was announced today (http://wellcomebookprize.org/) Awarded annually, and open to works of fiction and nonfiction, the prize focuses on books that have some aspect of medicine, illness or health as their central theme. This year’s shortlist includes the following six titles: The Iceberg by Marion Coutts Do No […]
The Reading Room: A review of Henry Marsh’s ‘Do No Harm’
Reviewed by Eoin Dinneen, Academic Clinical Fellow, University College London Hospital Do No Harm is a remarkably simple book. So much so, The Guardian (the book was short listed for The Guardian ‘First Book Award’) asks, ‘Why has no one ever written a book like this before?’ Each chapter’s starting point is a […]
The Reading Room: A review of ‘Performance, Madness and Psychiatry’
Performance, Madness and Psychiatry Isolated Acts Edited by Anna Harpin & Juliet Foster Reviewed by Femi Oyebode National Centre for Mental Health 25 Vincent Drive Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2FG Femi_oyebode@msn.com In the spring of 1836, John Clare (1793-1864) visited Peterborough and accompanied Mrs. Marsh, the bishop’s wife, to the theatre to see Merchant […]
The Reading Room: A review of ‘Jo Spence, The Final Project’
Reviewed by Steven Kenny Jo Spence, The Final Project, 1991–92. © The Estate of Jo Spence. Courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery, London. Jo Spence was a pioneering figure within the realms of photographic discourse, image based political activism and the application of photography as a therapeutic tool. From the early 1970s Spence worked within […]
The Reading Room: A review of Katrina Bramstedt’s ‘Trapped in my own labyrinth: poetry spawned by vertigo’
Reviewed by Giskin Day, Senior Teaching Fellow, Imperial College London Many people, including me until I read Katrina Bramstedt’s book, mistakenly use ‘vertigo’ to describe a fear of heights. The correct term for this is ‘acrophobia’. Vertigo is a serious and disabling symptom of a constellation of inner-ear disorders that describes a disorientating, spinning […]
The Reading Room: A review of Marion Coutts’s ‘The Iceberg’
The Iceberg by Marion Coutts Reviewed by Elizabeth Barry, Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick Marion Coutts’s 2014 memoir The Iceberg details the period covering her husband Tom Lubbock’s diagnosis with an aggressive brain tumour, the progress of his condition, and his death. Lubbock, art critic for The Independent newspaper, himself […]