Activating Theatre: people participating, performing politics A practice-based symposium examining how theatre and performance work to change people and society Tuesday 6 March 2012, Stage@leeds Building, University of Leeds […]
Latest articles
Ayesha Ahmad: Medicine’s Soul Suffering
It is not so often in our contemporary clinical environment that the passages of the soul find quiet refuge. What we believe (with)in has been overturned by what we can know, as if knowing brings meaning. We know that we shall die but it does not tell us what our death will mean. […]
Ayesha Ahmad: Dr Sam Alberti – Centre for Humanities and Health Seminar, Kings College, London
The next Centre for Humanities and Health seminar will take place on 7th March, 6pm in K0.31 (the Small Committee Room on the Strand Campus) Dr Sam Alberti of the Royal College of Surgeons of England will present a talk entitled ‘The past, present and future of medical museums’ All are welcome and there is […]
James Poskett: What to do with patients’ stories?
Narrative is a hot topic in the medical humanities. It can also be bewildering. Over the years literary theory has helped to bring the relevance of patient’s stories to the forefront of medical practice. But, as Johanna Shapiro notes in her recent paper Illness narratives, critical approaches to such stories have also complicated the practical […]
Ayesha Ahmad: Medical Humanities Consortium (MHC) 10th Annual Meeting
The 10th Annual Meeting for the Medical Humanities Consortium (MHC) ‘Hospitals, Healthcare, and the Medical Humanities’ has been scheduled for May 15th-16th 2012 and will be held at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, 4401 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224. There is still time to submit a proposal – deadline is December 20, 2012: […]
James Poskett: Material and visual culture of conferences
Conferences can be somewhat dry affairs. Papers delivered as long droning monologues are liable to send even the most hardened academics into a dreary stupor. The more enticing discussions can also take their toll as the days wear on, debate often returning to ancient disputes. So what better way to break up the day and […]
Ayesha Ahmad: Review of ‘Doing Clinical Ethics’ by Dr Daniel Sokol
Since Hippocrates in early 5 B.C., Medicine has carried an ‘angel on its shoulder’; a reflexive gaze on the skill, and phenomenologies of healing between the doctor and his patient. Ethics is a code, a practice, and a guide amid the terrain of the hands that tend to the body using instruments of medicine’s enterprise. […]
Ayesha Ahmad: “Stories are all we have”- reflecting on ‘An Imperfect Offering’ by James Orbinski
In ‘An Imperfect Offering’, a memoir written by James Orbinski on his travelling tales as a doctor working and bearing witness in some of the world’s most death-ridden and hostile regions, he writes of a man he met in Afghanistan who once said to him: “No scars, no story, no life. Sometimes, the best story […]
Ayesha Ahmad: ‘Looking and Healing Seminar’: King’s College London
Highly recommended is a forthcoming seminar to be held at the Centre for Humanities and Health, King’s College London by Dr Matha Fleming. Dr Fleming is a museum professional and academic working in the interdisciplinary nexus between the sciences, the humanities and the fine arts: her work over several decades has forged innovative and productive […]
Khalid Ali: Film Review: Asmaa: Directed by Amr Salama: Star rating ****
With annual World AIDS Day taking place 1 December, this new Egyptian film, which was shown at the recent London Film Festival, is very topical. The subject of HIV in European and American cinema has of course been explored in many films (such as “Savage nights” (1992), “Philadelphia” (1993), “The Hours” (2002), and “Angels in […]