Me, me, me. What could be more antisocial than a preoccupation with one’s own life at the expense of others? The Greek myth of Narcissus perhaps captured it best. The proud young hunter, uninterested in the affections of others, found satisfaction in his own reflection. Consumed by self-love and unable to leave his mirror image, […]
Latest articles
Ayesha Ahmad: CFP: Comics and Medicine: Navigating the Margins, 22-24 July 2012, Toronto, Canada
The third international interdisciplinary conference* on comics and medicine will continue to explore the intersection of sequential visual arts and medicine. This year we will highlight perspectives that are often under-represented in graphic narratives, such as depictions of the Outsider or Other in the context of issues such as barriers to healthcare, the stigma of […]
James Poskett: Medicine adrift at sea
You’re on board a small British merchant ship in the English Channel and you start to feel very ill. There’s no doctor on board. What do you do? If the year is 1844, you’re in luck. The Government has recently made it compulsory for all merchant vessels to carry medicines, to be kept in a […]
Ayesha Ahmad: Forthcoming Symposium ‘Activating Theatre: people participating, performing politics’ at University of Leeds
Activating Theatre: people participating, performing politics A practice-based symposium examining how theatre and performance work to change people and society Tuesday 6 March 2012, Stage@leeds Building, University of Leeds […]
Ayesha Ahmad: Medicine’s Soul Suffering
It is not so often in our contemporary clinical environment that the passages of the soul find quiet refuge. What we believe (with)in has been overturned by what we can know, as if knowing brings meaning. We know that we shall die but it does not tell us what our death will mean. […]
Ayesha Ahmad: Dr Sam Alberti – Centre for Humanities and Health Seminar, Kings College, London
The next Centre for Humanities and Health seminar will take place on 7th March, 6pm in K0.31 (the Small Committee Room on the Strand Campus) Dr Sam Alberti of the Royal College of Surgeons of England will present a talk entitled ‘The past, present and future of medical museums’ All are welcome and there is […]
James Poskett: What to do with patients’ stories?
Narrative is a hot topic in the medical humanities. It can also be bewildering. Over the years literary theory has helped to bring the relevance of patient’s stories to the forefront of medical practice. But, as Johanna Shapiro notes in her recent paper Illness narratives, critical approaches to such stories have also complicated the practical […]
Ayesha Ahmad: Medical Humanities Consortium (MHC) 10th Annual Meeting
The 10th Annual Meeting for the Medical Humanities Consortium (MHC) ‘Hospitals, Healthcare, and the Medical Humanities’ has been scheduled for May 15th-16th 2012 and will be held at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, 4401 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224. There is still time to submit a proposal – deadline is December 20, 2012: […]
James Poskett: Material and visual culture of conferences
Conferences can be somewhat dry affairs. Papers delivered as long droning monologues are liable to send even the most hardened academics into a dreary stupor. The more enticing discussions can also take their toll as the days wear on, debate often returning to ancient disputes. So what better way to break up the day and […]
Ayesha Ahmad: Review of ‘Doing Clinical Ethics’ by Dr Daniel Sokol
Since Hippocrates in early 5 B.C., Medicine has carried an ‘angel on its shoulder’; a reflexive gaze on the skill, and phenomenologies of healing between the doctor and his patient. Ethics is a code, a practice, and a guide amid the terrain of the hands that tend to the body using instruments of medicine’s enterprise. […]