Katie Roiphe. The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End. Virago, 2016 Reviewed by Professor Robert C Abrams, Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York A central premise of Katie Roiphe’s The Violet Hour is that the awareness of approaching death is a milestone we all will face at some time […]
Latest articles
CHCI Health Humanities Summer Institute 2016
Sunday 26 – Monday 27 June 2016, 10.00 CHCI Health Humanities Summer Institute 2016 Health Humanities Now Anatomy Lecture Theatre & Museum, King’s Building, Strand Campus 2 day Conference which aims to gather scholars and practitioners from all over the world in the burgeoning field of the health humanities. By showcasing some of […]
First impressions only happen once
Fergus Shanahan Eyes smiling, face beaming, the porter rose from his stool to greet arrivals at the cancer centre, each nervously hesitant, staying close to a supporting loved one. With the confidence of a man who enjoyed being good at his job, he paused for those needing directions, reassured us that we were […]
The Reading Room: Reading for Health
Erika Wright. Reading for Health: Medical Narratives and the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2016) Reviewed by Dr Jane Darcy, Department of English, University College London Erika Wright begins Reading for Health with a timely reminder for Victorianists, quoting Ruskin’s argument about the dangerous temptation of the ‘phenomenon of the sick-room’ for […]
The Screening Room: old age, loneliness and cinema
Loneliness, and Belonging in the Age of Photoshop Short film, directed by Amjad Abu Ala Review by Professor Robert C Abrams, Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York There is a world of life portrayed in the few brief minutes of the poignant but joyous short film, ‘Studio’, by Amjad Abu Ala (in Arabic […]
The Reading Room: Salka Valka
Salka Valka by Halldór Laxness: she needs to be alone Reviewed by David S. Baldwin, Professor of Psychiatry Clinical and Experimental Sciences Academic Unit Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, United Kingdom Email: dsb1@soton.ac.uk Born in Reykjavík in April 1902, Halldór Guðjónsson (he changed his name to Halldór Kiljan Laxness in 1923) […]
The Reading Room: The Other Side of Silence
The Other Side of Silence: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir of Depression by Linda Gask. Vie Books, 2015 Reviewed by Dr Lilian Hickey There is a shocking, but humane and tender poetry in George Eliot’s lines in Middlemarch which refer to the deafening ‘roar’ of life that might lie ‘on the other side of silence’ in our […]
The Screening Room: a review of the Lebanese film Ghadi
Music overcoming disability – Ghadi, Lebanon, 2013, directed by Amin Dora Reviewed by Dr Reem Gaafar, a Sudanese doctor, writer, filmmaker and graphic designer A special screening will take place at the Polish Cultural Centre, 238 King Street, Hammersmith, London W6 0RF, Sapphire Room, 2nd Floor, at 8pm Friday 3rd June 2016. To book […]
Medicine Unboxed: Students 2016
Deadline: Midnight Sunday 3 July 2016 Medicine Unboxed 2016 is on the theme of Wonder and takes place in Cheltenham on 19-20 November 2016. Medicine Unboxed: Students brings together students of the arts, health and medicine to present their work and thinking at Medicine Unboxed. Applications are invited for a 10-minute presentation at Medicine […]
Art, Life and Illness
David Marron: Encounters Columba Quigley David Marron, Geras 3, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist and GV Art, London I was fortunate to catch this exhibition, held over the May Bank Holiday weekend at Lumen Studios, The Crypt, St John on Bethnal Green. David Marron is both an artist and a paramedic. The exhibition […]