CFP: PCA/ACA Medical Humanities Area--Deadline:11/30/07 (3/19-22/08)

Medical Humanities, a new PCA/ACA Area for 2008, is a burgeoning field
that includes cultural intersections of medicineâ€"the human scienceâ€"and,
literature, film, and mediaâ€"representations of the human experienceâ€"
through an interdisciplinary approach encompassing medical narratives;
illness narrative (also called pathography by Thomas Couser, originating
with Freud and Sacks); women’s illness narrative (called pathogynography
by R. A. Housel); Rita Charon’s narrative medicine (also referred to by
Kleinman as mini-ethnographies), medical poetry by both physicians and
patients; representations of medicine, doctors, patients, disease,
disability, and death in film and television; the myth of the medicine
man; socio-political medicine-related representations in popular culture;
monsters and medicine; medical technology, faith, religion, and reason;
ethics in/of science, medicine and experimentation; music and medicine;
natural healing/homeopathy and popular culture; the mind-body connection;
representations of cancer in popular culture; representations of mental
illness in popular culture; gendered medicine; hysteria and
hysterectomies, etc.

Sophocles wrote Philoctetes in one of the first representations of
Medical Humanities. Accounts of medical science, such as Shelley’s
Frankenstein, have influenced cultural hegemonic discourse for
centuries. Today, doctors at Harvard, Columbia, University of Rochester,
and other prominent medical schools are studying the patient’s narrative
in an effort to better understand and treat the “whole person”; this
technique is called Narrative Medicine, developed by Columbia’s Charon.
Films like Finding Neverland, The Doctor, Terms of Endearment, Kinney,
and television shows like ER, Gray’s Anatomy and Everwood, attempt to
represent and define the role of medicine and science in the postmodern
world. Medical Humanities is a space for all of these topics and much
more.

Abstracts of papers, individual proposals, and/or panel proposals of 250
words are welcome for the March 19-22, 2008 San Francisco PCA/ACA
conference. Please include your name, title, affiliation, and contact
information, including email address, and send in-text via email to: Dr.
Rebecca Housel, rahgsl_at_rit.edu

The deadline is November 30, 2007.

The March 19-22, 2008 San Francisco conference will take place in the Bay-
area Marriot, conveniently located near Chinatown, San Francisco Bay area
restaurants and shopping, the Ghiradelli Chocolate Factory, and easily
accessible from the airport. Feel free to contact Rebecca Housel for
more information.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Dr. Rebecca Housel, Department of English
College of Liberal Arts
92 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY 14623
585-475-4422~rahgsl_at_rit.edu

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Received on Tue Sep 18 2007 - 21:57:36 EDT