Review: Thinks Itself A Hawk, Wendy French, The Hippocrates Press, 2016. by Rebecca Goss On June 30th this year, I headed to University College London Hospital (UCLH) Macmillan Cancer Centre to listen to Wendy French read from her new poetry collection Thinks Itself A Hawk. As I approached the revolving doors in the middle of the […]
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Book Review: The Heart
Maylis de Kerangal, The Heart. Translated by Sam Taylor. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, US. In the UK it is titled Mend the Living, translated by Jessica French, and published by MacLehose Press. Reviewed by Elizabeth Glass, PhD student in Comparative Humanities, University of Louisville. The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal tells the story of […]
Book Review: Hysteria Today
Hysteria Today, edited by Anouchka Grose. Karnac Books, 2016. Reviewed by Kathryn Lafferty, PhD student in Comparative Humanities, University of Louisville. In the first edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I) published in 1952, the American Psychiatric Association removed the term “hysteria,” implying that the term was no longer relevant to […]
Film Review: Notes on Blindness
Image courtesy of Curzon Artificial Eye Seeing blindness in the eye: Film review of Notes on Blindness, UK, 2016, directed by Peter Middleton and James Pinney Currently in UK cinemas Review by: Dr Khalid Ali, Screening room editor Literary work exploring visual impairment and blindness has always been rewarded by great critical reception–All the […]
“Embarrassing Bodies” – the male doctor/female patient encounter
From awkwardness to impropriety: conceptualising the male doctor’s embarrassing body in Victorian medical literature By Alison Moulds (University of Oxford) This post is based on a paper given at the “Embarrassing Bodies” conference, organised by Birkbeck, University of London In 1858, Dr Edward Lane – owner of the Moor Park hydropathic establishment in Surrey […]
Book Review: Brett Kahr’s ‘Tea with Winnicott’
Tea with Winnicott by Brett Kahr with illustrations by Alison Bechdel. Published by Karnac, 2016. Reviewed by Dr Neil Vickers. Brett Kahr’s Tea with Winnicott is the first volume to appear in Karnac’s new ‘Interviews With Icons’ series, in which contemporary psychoanalysts conduct imaginary interviews with major figures from the psychoanalytic pantheon. […]
‘I am Book’ – Clare Best
Illustrated talk for University of Kent symposium on Artists’ Books and the Medical Humanities, on 21 April 2016 http://www.kent.ac.uk/english/research/conferences/artistsbooks.html I had been so looking forward to this wonderful symposium devised, designed and immaculately planned by Stella Bolaki, and to seeing the exhibition of Martha Hall’s and other book artists’ work – which is still on […]
Film Review: The Fugitive Doctor in ‘River’
‘River’, Canada, Laos, 2015, directed by Jamie M. Dagg Released on DVD and digital download on 18th July 2016 Reviewed by Dr Khalid Ali Doctors and crimes of professional misconduct have been the focus of films such as ‘Coma, USA, 1978’, and ‘Shutter Island, USA, 2010’, while doctors volunteering in NGOs in troubled zones […]
Book Review: The Way We Die Now
Seamus O’Mahony, The Way We Die Now. Head of Zeus, 2016. Reviewed by Richard Smith Perhaps the first and most important thing to say about this book is that it’s a joy to read. I started it on a flight from Dhaka to Mexico City when I was exhausted, but quickly […]
Wellcome Book Prize Winner 2016 – ‘It’s All In Your Head’ reviewed
Suzanne O’Sullivan, It’s All In Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness. London: Vintage, 2016; first publ in hardback 2015 by Chatto & Windus Reviewed by Professor Edward Shorter The very subtitle of the book makes one nervous: “stories of imaginary illness.” If there is one phrase that psychosomatic patients – who have symptoms […]