The Messenger follows Jack (Robert Sheehan), the titular protagonist, who delivers messages from the ghosts of the recently-deceased to their bereaved loved ones. Only he can see those ghosts. Following the murder of a prominent war correspondent Mark (Alex Wyndham), Mark’s ghost tasks Jack with giving his wife an important message. Despite a premise that is […]
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The Reading Room: A review of ‘Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us’
Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us by S. Lochlann Jain. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Reviewed by Mary Anglin, Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky At the age of thirty-six, Lochlann Jain embarked on a journey for which neither her anthropological training nor her upbringing as “a reticent Canadian” and the daughter […]
Film Review: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”, USA 2015 Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon In UK cinemas now American cinema has always been fascinated by stories of cancer in young people; Love story, USA 1970, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Story_(1970_film), 50/50 (USA, 2011) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50/50_(2011_film), and more recently “The fault in our stars, USA 2014” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fault_in_Our_Stars_(film). The first feature film from […]
The Reading Room: The Lumen Journal – Call for Submissions
The Lumen is an annual Edinburgh University new writing and arts journal of the mutual dialogue between medicine, the arts and the humanities. We hope to foster creative and critical discourse on the personal experience of illness and healthcare. The Lumen will provide a space for the expression of the deeply personal narratives of the […]
The Reading Room: A review of James Rhodes’ ‘Instrumental’
Instrumental by James Rhodes Canongate Books, 2015. £16.99 hardcover, £14.99 E-Book Reviewed by Vivek Santayana, Postgraduate student in Literature and Modernity, The University of Edinburgh James Rhodes’s controversial memoir, Instrumental, is about many things. On the one hand, it is about the trauma of child rape. There is an ethical dimension to the […]
Film Review: The Maggie (1954) directed by Alexander Mackendrick
As part of the British Film Institute- BFI’s Britain on Film Project (www.bfi.org.uk/britain-on-film), the Maggie, (1954), one of the most endearing comedies made by Ealing Studios, has been digitized and re-released online and on DVD. […]
Difficult Histories by Niamh NicGabhann
I was recently involved in a project which explored the histories and memories of St. Davnet’s Hospital, Monaghan. St. Davnet’s was founded as the Cavan and Monaghan District Lunatic Asylum in 1869, and its name changed to ‘Monaghan Mental Hospital’ in the late 1920s, and later to ‘St. Davnet’s Hospital’ in the 1950s. I was […]
The Reading Room: Call for Reviewer
Julie Laplante’s Healing Roots: Anthropology in Life and Medicine is available for review. “Umhlonyane, also known as Artemisia afra, is one of the oldest and best-documented indigenous medicines in South Africa. This bush, which grows wild throughout the sub-Saharan region, smells and tastes like “medicine,” thus easily making its way into people’s lives and […]
The Reading Room: ePatients Conference, Queen’s University Belfast
ePatients The Medical, Ethical and Legal Repercussions of Blogging and Micro-Blogging Experiences of Illness and Disease Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities Queen’s University Belfast, 11-12 September 2015 The provisional programme for this conference is now available: Friday 11th September 11.00 – 11.30 Registration 11.30 – 11.45 […]
The Reading Room: ‘Patients as People’
Emma Barnard MA (RCA) ___________________________________________________________________ PATIENTS AS PEOPLE – an Exhibition by Emma Barnard in collaboration with consultant surgeons and patients within the ENT department, Whipps Cross University Hospital, Barts Health NHS. As a fine artist working predominantly within the field of photography, video and sound, I have for the past few years […]