Mike White writes: In June, the Centre for Medical Humanities is convening a ‘critical mass’ meeting in Durham of its international partners in community-based arts in health. Leading practitioners and researchers in this field are coming from United States, Australia, South Africa and Ireland to reflect on shared issues in applying arts practice to healthcare and medicine and to explore how meaningful international research collaborations can be developed that also involve local communities. The event is supported by Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England and, after a programme of focussed discussion in Durham, consultative forums with North of England organisations delivering arts in health work are to be held in South Shields (27 June) and Manchester (30 June). There will be a full blog account later of the ‘critical mass’ gathering, the regional forums and follow-up events.
Events
‘Gender, Sex and Sexualities: A Day of Provocations’ Friday 23 September 2011
The Centre for Medical Humanities, in partnership with the Gender and Sexuality Research Network, is delighted to announce that Durham University’s first interdisciplinary research day on Gender, Sex and Sexualities will be held on Friday 23 September 2011.
Full details of the programme are available here. To register, please complete the form here. There is no charge for attendance but places are limited.
Marius Romme and Sandra Escher – Public Lecture Monday 5 December 6pm
Professor Dr Marius Romme and Dr Sandra Escher
with three voice hearers telling about their voice-hearing experience
Monday 5 December 2011, 6.00 – 7.15pm
Rosemary Cramp Lecture Theatre
Calman Learning Centre, Durham University Science Site
Prof. Dr. Marius Romme and Dr. Sandra Escher are world experts in voice-hearing and are visiting fellows of the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University. In their second public lecture they will: outline the core concepts in their approach to accepting and making sense of voices; review similarities and differences between voice-hearers who become patients and voice-hearers who do not, concentrating on the emotional response to voices and the role of traumatic experience; present findings from their recent study of fifty voice-hearers; outline the ten steps necessary for recovery; and discuss the importance for voice hearers of learning to talk about their experience in a structured way.
To conclude the evening, Jess Davey, Lindsey Stebbing and Adam Tivenan will each tell their story. Jess, Lindsey and Adam have been participating in the voice-hearing workshops run by Sandra Escher during her time in Durham.
All welcome.
For more details about voice-hearing research at Durham please visit our web site.
Philosophy matters – Annual Royal Institute of Philosophy Event, Bristol, March 21
Philosophy matters
Annual Royal Institute of Philosophy Event
Monday 21 March 2011, 6:00-7:30pm
Great Hall, Wills Memorial Building, Queen’s Road, Bristol,
Organised by Dr Havi Carel & Prof James Ladyman
Speakers: Professor AC Grayling (Birkbeck College, University of London); Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill (House of Lords & University of Cambridge); Professor James Ladyman (University of Bristol); Dr Havi Carel (UWE Bristol).Chair: Dr Julian Baggini (editor-in-chief, The Philosophers’ Magazine)
Why study philosophy? Is philosophy valuable to those in society who don’t engage with it directly? Is a degree in philosophy a good preparation for employment? How does philosophy contribute to culture and can it help us be happy?
In recent months public debate about the cost and value of higher education has been at the centre of national interest. The value of higher education, and more specifically that of the humanities and other non-vocational subjects, has been both questioned altogether, and reduced to its economic and social impact.
The philosophy departments of the University of Bristol and of UWE Bristol have joined forces with the Royal Institute of Philosophy to host a discussion that will go beyond the economics of higher education in order to discuss the ways in which philosophy matters in individual and public life. The event will be free, open to all and aimed at the general public.
The panel will consider the narrow economic value of philosophy, and also to consider whether ideals nurtured by philosophy such as those of free, democratic and open thought and critical reflection, are essential components of a free society. The discussion will examine the contribution philosophy has brought to society, question the view of the Brown report that higher education is a private good aimed solely at increasing the earning power of the individual, and provide concrete examples of ways in which philosophical and critical thinking contribute to our society.
The event is free and all are welcome, but booking is required. The event is funded by the Royal Institute of Philosophy, AHRC, UWE, Bristol and the University of Bristol.
Download the Philosophy Matters poster.
Religious Melancholy – An Interdisciplinary Conference, 19-20 May 2011, King’s College
Religious Melancholy. An Interdisciplinary Conference
19-20 May 2011
King’s College London
“Sickness and sorrows come and go, but a superstitious soul hath no rest”
– Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy
To date there has been no opportunity for scholars to contribute to an interdisciplinary dialogue on this important area of human suffering. The aim of the conference, therefore, is to open up a new panorama, illuminating the importance of religious melancholy across a number of key historical periods and amongst a range of religious ideologies and beliefs. We will be considering such melancholy from its classical origins to the modern period, with speakers drawn from theology and religious studies, history and history of medicine, philosophy, sociology and European and English literature. Although the main focus of the conference will be religious melancholy in various Christian sects, it will also consider demonstrable influences from other religions – two speakers, for example, will be discussing the impact of ideas from medieval Islamic medicine.
Importantly, the conference will ask questions about whether religious melancholy in the sense of spiritual or emotional despair might have a central place in our contemporary understanding of depressive illness.
The conference will be an intimate one, consisting of plenary papers and discussion. Places are very restricted. Please see the website for details of how to register your interest.
Mikhail Epstein Public Lecture – On the Future of the Humanities
On the Future of the Humanities
Professor Mikhail Epstein (Emory University)
Wednesday 2 March, 5.30pm – 6.30pm
The Ustinov Room, Van Mildert College
The reaction I often hear on the title of my work in progress is surprise: “Do you really believe that the humanities have a future?” I do believe in the future of the humanities, yet in order to survive the current crisis they need to not limit themselves to scholarship but to create their own ways to change what they study, to change the human world. The creative aspect of the humanities has not yet found its recognition in the established classification and methodology of scientific disciplines. We know that technology serves as the practical extension (“application”) of the natural sciences, and politics as the extension of the social sciences. Both technology and politics are designed to transform what their respective disciplines study objectively. Yet what is the constructive enhancement of the humanities?
In my lecture, I will argue that we need a practical branch of the humanities which functions similarly to technology and politics, but is specific to the cultural domain. When offering a certain theory, we need to ask ourselves if it has the power to inaugurate a new cultural practice, an artistic movement, a disciplinary field, a new institution, a life style, or an intellectual community.
Mikhail Epstein is a literary theorist and critical thinker and is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Cultural Theory and Russian Literature at Emory University. His area includes Western and Russian postmodernism; new methods and interdisciplinary approaches in the humanities; semiotics and language evolution; ideas and electronic media. Professor Epstein is an IAS/Prowse Fellow, hosted by Van Mildert College.
All welcome.
The Language of Pain (8pm Radio 4, 2nd May 2015)
Virginia Woolf claimed that English has no words to express what it feels like to be in pain. Professor Joanna Bourke from the Birkbeck Pain Project sets out to challenge this notion, exploring archives from the last two centuries to illustrate the rich metaphorical language people have used to express pain, and demonstrate why doctors need to pay attention to what their patients say. This one-hour programme includes contributions from social, cultural and music historians Dr Louise Hide, Dr Lucy Bending, Dr Simon Heighes, Professor Javier Moscoso and Dr Ana Carden-Coyne, as well as pain clinicians Professor Rita Charon and Dr Joanna Zakrzewska, and artist Dr Deborah Padfield. It has been produced by Isabel Sutton for Just Radio.
Saturday 2nd May, 8pm (Radio 4)
‘Voice-hearing: What does the future hold?’ Palace Green Library, Durham, 5 Nov 2016 from 10am-4pm
‘Voice-hearing: What does the future hold?’
Wolfson Gallery, Palace Green Library
5 November 2016, 10am-4pm
Hearing the Voice warmly welcomes you to a day-long event of short presentations, panel discussions and interactive sessions with academics, clinicians and experts by experience exploring future directions in voice-hearing research, the treatment of distressing voices, mental health services, public understandings of voice-hearing and the international Hearing Voices Movement.
The day will feature a public lecture by Marius Romme and Sandra Escher.
The programme will also include speakers from the Hearing the Voice team, such as Professor Charles Fernyhough (Director, Hearing the Voice), Dr Angela Woods (Co-director, Hearing the Voice), Rachel Waddingham (Chair of Intervoice) and Guy Dodgson (Clinical Lead, Early Intervention in Psychosis services, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust).
The event is free and all are invited to attend, but as places are limited early booking is essential.
Reservations can be made through Eventbrite here.
Further information
This event marks the opening of Hearing Voices: suffering, inspiration and the everyday, a major exhibition on voice-hearing produced by Hearing the Voice and Durham’s Palace Green Library.
The exhibition will be installed at Palace Green Library, Durham, UK from 5 November 2016 to 26 February 2017.
About Hearing Voices: suffering, inspiration and the everyday
Hearing a voice in the absence of any speaker is one of the most unusual, complex, and mysterious aspects of human experience. Typically regarded, as a symptom of severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia, voice-hearing is increasingly recognized as an important part of many people’s lives and experience, as well as a phenomenon that has had profound significance, not only for individuals, but across communities, cultures, and history.
From the revelatory and inspirational voices of medieval mystics to those of imaginary friends in childhood, and from the inner voices of writers as they craft their characters to the stories of people from the international Hearing Voices Movement, this exhibition will explore the complexity and diversity of the experience and interpretation of voice-hearing.
This exhibition draws on the work of Hearing the Voice, a large interdisciplinary study of voice-hearing based at Durham University and funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Visit Palace Green Library between 5 November 2016 and 26 February 2017 to get involved, or join in the conversation on social media with the hashtag #HearingVoicesDU.
If you have any queries relating to the event then please do not hesitate to contact our Hearing the Voice Project Coordinators.
Celebrating Our Future: New directions in Medical Humanities Research and Annual Summer Party (Thursday June 20, St Chad’s College)
Staff at the Centre for Medical Humanities are delighted to invite you to our Annual
Affiliates Summer Party
Thursday 20 June
3.30 – 5pm
St Chad’s SCR
St Chad’s College
Durham
This year we celebrate the new directions in Medical Humanities research through the work of three of our post-doctoral fellows. Each of the fellows will make a short presentation and we will then open the floor to questions and discussion, followed by drinks and canapés in a convivial setting to round off the academic year’s achievements.
Our post-doctoral fellows are: Dr Jenny Laws , who challenges one of the leading orthodoxies in contemporary health practice, that of active recoveries, and explores the nature of human energies (see The Active Patient ); Dr Will Viney, who is undertaking a cultural study of twins across history and literature; and Dr Hilary Powell, who works on twelfth-century saints’ lives in the Hearing the Voice project.
All are welcome, RSVPs via email essential for catering purposes.