The Levelling, directed by Hope Dickson Leach On general release in UK cinemas now Review by Professor Robert Abrams, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York Even before you view The Levelling, a film written and directed by Hope Dickson Leach, its title gives off a disquieting aura; you feel you are about to enter the […]
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New Editor for Medical Humanities
BMJ, a leading medical knowledge provider, is pleased to announce Brandy Schillace PhD as the new editor of Medical Humanities. Dr Schillace is Senior Research Associate and Public Engagement Fellow for the Dittrick Museum of Medical History, College of Arts and Sciences, at Case Western Reserve University, US. For ten years, she managed the medical […]
Stories From the Birthing Room
Sue Wiseman, Professor of Seventeenth Century Literature at Birkbeck University of London, is organising an event entitled “Stories From the Birthing Room” during Birkbeck’s annual Arts Week. Here she discusses the event and some of the issues that she hopes will be open for discussion. ‘I wil not use any kind of sorcery or incantation […]
Book Review: Notes From the Sick Room
Notes from the Sick Room by Steve Finbow, London: Repeater Books, 2017, 343 pages, £8.99. Reviewed by Alan Radley, Emeritus Professor of Social Psychology, Loughborough University This is a book about sickness, more specifically about the illnesses of a number of well-known artists and philosophers. It is also about the illness history of the book’s […]
Auditory Hallucinations, Agoraphobia and Extremism as Portrayed by Actor Ahmed Magdy
In this podcast, our Screening Room editor, Khalid Ali, explores the role of film in shining a light on mental illlness, dysfunctional families, and the rise of religious fanaticism with Egyptian director Ahmed Magdy. Recently introduced to acting, Ahmed talks about his portrayal of three challenging characters: a young man imprisoned in his mother’s house in […]
Book Review: Deleuze and Baudrillard: From Cyberpunk to Biopunk
Deleuze and Baudrillard: From Cyberpunk to Biopunk by Sean McQueen, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016, 288 pages, £70. Reviewed by Dr Anna McFarlane (University of Glasgow) Sean McQueen’s first monograph ambitiously aims to create “a cognitive mapping of the transition from late capitalism to biocapitalism” (1) and to do this through tracing trends in science […]
A Summer of CfPs!
The medical humanities in the UK is seeing an explosion of opportunities at the moment with a number of events coming up and several calls for papers available for your consideration – so if you were worried that you might get bored over the summer then fear no more! I pulled these together with the […]
Exhibition Review: Transplant and Life
‘Transplant and Life’ Exhibition, Royal College of Surgeons, 22 November 2016 – 20 May 2017 John Wynne and Tim Wainwright Review by Emma Barnard Having on a couple of occasions visited the captivating, slightly morbid Hunterian Museum, housed in the majestic Royal College of Surgeons, Lincolns Inn Fields, my initial thoughts when being asked to […]
Long Read: What Does it Mean to Listen, and How Can it Be Learned?
Anders Juhl Rasmussen interviews Dr Rishi Goyal, Director of Medicine, Literature and Society and Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Centre, and an attending physician in the Emergency Department at Columbia University. Goyal is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, and Rasmussen gives some observations from a recent teaching session […]
Book Review – Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England
Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England by Olivia Weisser, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015, 296 pages, £60. Reviewed by Sarah O’Dell, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA 91702, sodell10@apu.edu In this well-researched and compelling work, Olivia Weisser addresses the relative paucity of scholarship on early modern gender and illness to argue […]