Cancelled: Medical Humanities: Critical Concepts, Creative Practices

Registration 

Please register for the 4 days seminar here. It is possible to attend one, two, three and/or four days. 

Creativity and innovation in Medical Humanities

Welcome to interdisciplinary, research-led lectures introducing Medical Humanities. By adopting a transnational and transcultual perspective, the seminar charts this discipline’s historical evolution, theoretical foundations, and practical applications in health care and policy making. A field marked by innovation and border crossing, medical humanities stems from and promotes creativity as a methodological and conceptual tool for better understanding health and disease across disciplinary, historical, cultural, and/or linguistic boundaries. The course draws special attention to aspects of creativity and innovation, highlighting their development within this discipline’s critical traditions and disruptive processes. 

Program 

Medical Humanities: An Introduction 

Tuesday 25 June 2024
Time: 11:00-12:00

Dr Marta Arnaldi, Oslo and Oxford
Prof Eivind Engebretsen, Oslo
Prof John Ødemark, Oslo

In this introductory lecture, we will explore medical humanities’ historical and theoretical foundations. Closely linked to the rise of bioethics and humanities-inspired medical programmes in 1970s America, the field has since gained international traction, opening up to and integrating a range of transdisciplinary and transcultural perspectives. In particular, the lecture details the disciplines’ four waves, from its pedagogical origins to its current translational agenda, highlighting the radical approaches that have infused the field (e.g., critical medical humanities, multilingual medical humanities, queer medical humanities).

Selected bibliography

Bleakley, Alan, ed. Routledge Handbook of the Medical Humanities. London: Routledge, 2022.

Bleakley, Alan. Medical Humanities : Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics. Abingdon, England: Routledge, 2024.

Crawford, Paul, Brian Brown, and Andrea Charise, eds. The Routledge Companion to Health Humanities. London: Routledge, 2020.

Whitehead, Anne, Angela Woods, Sarah J. Atkinson, Jane Macnaughton, and Jennifer Richards, eds. The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. Especially: the Introduction, pp. 1-28, and Fitzgerald, Des and Felicity Callard, ‘Entangling the Medical Humanities’, pp. 37-45.

Engebretsen, Eivind, Gina Fraas Henrichsen, and John Ødemark. “Towards a Translational Medical Humanities: Introducing the Cultural Crossings of Care.” Medical humanities 46, no. 2 (2020): e2–e2.

Wilson, Steven. “Manifesto for a Multilingual Medical Humanities.” The Polyphony, 30 May 2023. https://thepolyphony.org/2023/05/30/manifesto-multilingual-medhums/

Arnaldi, Marta, and Charles Forsdick. “Medical Humanities’ Translational Core: Remodelling the Field.” The Polyphony, 30 August 2023. https://thepolyphony.org/2023/08/30/medhums-translational-core/

Lewis, Francesca. “The Kaleidoscopic Value of Neuroqueer Knowledges.” The Polyphony, 18 July 2023. https://thepolyphony.org/2023/07/18/neuroqueer-knowledges/

Slovic, Scott, Swarnalatha Rangarajan, and Vidya Sarveswaran, eds. The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Medical-Environmental Humanities. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.

The Art of Losing: Memory and Identity in Alzheimer’s

Wednesday 26 June 2024
Time: 11:00-12:00

Dr Marta Arnaldi, Oslo and Oxford
Prof Anand Viswanathaan, Harvard

This lecture offers a vivid example of how inter- and cross-disciplinary work in the medical humanities can take place. Considering Alzheimer’s disease as a paradigmatic case, it explores areas of translation and intersection between literature (specifically lyric Italian poetry) and the neurological sciences. By exploring forms of dementia, amnesia and identity dissolution in patient experience and poems, this lecture compares concepts of loss to suggest that, in the face of disease, a synergistic ‘reading’ of (these) bio-poetic accounts may help us better understand what we lose, when, and why. 

Selected bibliography

Livingston, Gill, et al. "Dementia Prevention, Intervention, and Care: 2020 Report of the Lancet Commission." Lancet 396, no. 10248 (2020): 413-446. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30367-6.

Viswanathan, Anand, and Mona Kuhn. "Exploring Our Inner and Outer Worlds: The Crossroads Where Art and Medicine Meet." Open Scholar. https://vimeo.com/441326843.

Stanley, MP. "Art from Mind a Sea." Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/how-a-neurological-condition-affects-an-artists-creativity.

Perosa, V., Zanon Zotin, MC., Schoemaker, D., Sveikata, L., Etherton, MR., Charidimou, A., Greenberg, SM., and Viswanathan, A. "Association Between Hippocampal Volumes and Cognition in Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy." Neurology 102, no. 2 (2024): e207854. https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000207854.

Poems discussed in the lecture [English translations will be provided]: Grisoni, Franca ed. Alzheimer d’amore. Poesie e meditazioni su una malattia [Alzheimer of love. Poems and meditations around a disease]. Novara: Interlinea, 2017.

The Dynamics of Infection: Literary Insights and Policy Responses

Thursday 27 June 2024
Time: 11:00-12:00

Dr Marta Arnaldi, Oslo and Oxford
Prof Nicola Gardini, Oxford

This lecture explores the biocultural dimensions of contagion. It examines the interplay between literary and policy factors in our cultural responses to epidemics such as AIDS and COVID-19. By presenting science as an expression of culture and literature as a form of science, this session challenges us to recognise the significance of interdisciplinary thinking and action, especially, but not solely, at times of crisis.

Selected bibliography

Engebretsen, Eivind, and Mona Baker. Rethinking Evidence in the Time of Pandemics: Scientific Vs Narrative Rationality and Medical Knowledge Practices. Cambridge University Press, 2022

Arnaldi, Marta. “Contagious Otherness: Translating Communicable Diseases in the Modern Italian and Francophone Novel.” Open Library of Humanities 8, no. 1 (2022).

Arnaldi, Marta. “Illness as a Foreign Tongue: Therapeutic Translation in Contemporary Italian Women’s Poetry.” Literature and medicine 40, no. 2 (2022): 295-325.

Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor & Aids and its Metaphors. London: Penguin, 2002.

Wald, Priscilla. Contagious : Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative. Durham, N.C. ; Duke University Press, 2008.

Ostherr, Kirsten. Cinematic Prophylaxis Globalization and Contagion in the Discourse of World Health. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

Laing, Olivia. The Lonely City. London: Canongate, 2017.

Relevant works by Nicola Gardini [English translations will be provided]: Io sono salute. Quando la letteratura incontra la medicina. [I am health. When literature meets medicine] Arezzo: Aboca, 2023, and La vita non vissuta. [The unlived life] Milan: Feltrinelli, 2015.

The Practice of Uncertainty: A Guide to the Unknown

Friday 28 June 2024
Time: 11:00-12:00

Dr Marta Arnaldi, Oslo and Oxford
Prof Kristin Margrete Heggen, Oslo

This final lecture integrates concepts of narrative medicine and health education to explore the potential of uncertainty and ambiguity in healthcare settings. To what extent should we tolerate risk, indecision, and/or doubt? Under what conditions is uncertainty a resource for knowledge acquisition, as opposed to a marker of scientific insufficiency? And if this is the case, what might ‘not knowing’ reveal?

Selected bibliography

Fricker, Miranda. Epistemic Injustice Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Engebretsen, Eivind, Ritika Sharma, Tony Joakim Ananiassen Sandset, Kristin Heggen, Ole Petter Ottersen, and Helen Clarke. "Teaching Sustainable Health Care through the Critical Medical Humanities." The Lancet (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(23)00809-7.

Guillemin, Marilys, and Kristin Heggen. "The Narrative Approach as a Learning Strategy in the Formation of Novice Researchers." Qualitative Health Research 22, no. 5 (2012): 700–707. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732311431443.

Heggen, Kristin, and Marillys Guillemin. "Protecting Participants' Confidentiality Using a Situated Research Ethics Approach." In The SAGE Handbook of Interview Research: The Complexity of the Craft, Second Edition, edited by Jaber F. Gubrium, James A. Holstein, Amir B. Marvasti, and Karyn D. McKinney, 465–476. Sage Publications, 2012. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452218403.n33.

Hillen, Marij A., Caitlin M. Gutheil, Tania D. Strout, Ellen M.A. Smets, and Paul K.J. Han. "Tolerance of Uncertainty: Conceptual Analysis, Integrative Model, and Implications for Healthcare." Social Science & Medicine 180 (May 2017): 62-75. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953617301703.

Charon, Rita, Sayantani DasGupta, Nellie Hermann, Craig Irvine, Eric R. Marcus, Edgar Rovera Colon, Danielle Spencer, and Maura Spiegel. The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Especially: Sayantani DasGupta, “The Politics of Pedagogy: Cripping, Queering, and Un-Homing Medical Humanities,” pp. 137-153.

Charon, Rita. Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Greenhalgh, Trisha, and Brian Hurwitz. Narrative Based Medicine: Dialogue and Discourse in Clinical Practice. London: BMJ Books, 1998.

About Bodies in Translation

This seminar series is organised by Dr Marta Arnaldi and Prof John Ødemark as part of the research project Bodies in Translation: Science, Knowledge and Sustainability in Cultural Translation, Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages & Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Education (SHE), University of Oslo. 

The Bodies in Translation project aims to investigate various cultural and epistemic translation practices where sustainable health and the human body serve as a boundary object between natural and cultural forms of knowledge. 

More information can be found here: Bodies in Translation: Science, Knowledge and Sustainability in Cultural Translation - Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (uio.no) and here: Bodies in Translation – Bodies in Translation is funded by The Research Council of Norway (Grant.nr. 315928) and based at the University of Oslo