Video / Audio

Colm Tóibín is the author of many bestselling and critically acclaimed novels, including The Master (which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize) and Brooklyn; the short-story collection Mothers and Sons; and, most recently, both the novel and play The Testament of Mary (which will open on Broadway later this spring, starring Fiona Shaw). Julie Orringer is the author of the short-story collection How to Breathe Underwater, which won the Northern California Book Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a “Best Book” by the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. In 2011, she published her “expertly crafted” and “emotionally haunting” first novel, The Invisible Bridge. Together, they will discuss the topic of “Family Novels" with Deborah Cohen, Professor of History at Northwestern and author of the forthcoming historical study Family Secrets.

Through a re-consideration of several classic instances, this lecture explores some of the ways in which the very excesses of polemical or satirical contributions to public debate may themselves be the main bearer of more adequate conceptions of human life.  It asks the unsettling question: might the outrageous offensiveness of F.R. Leavis's notorious attack on C.P. Snow actually provide a better model than contributions that are normally regarded as more 'constructive' and 'helpful'?

Panel Discussion on "Reports from the Field."

Poet Rachel Hadas reads from her work for the panel "Poetic Treatment I."

Panel discussion on "Humanistic and Clinical Evidence."

Panel discussion on "Narrative in Health Care."

A discussion on "Keywords: Toward a Critical Vocabulary of Disability Studies."

Taking “medical humanities” as its subject, the two-day conference considers some of the investigations and interventions made by those who study illness and health from the perspectives of the arts, humanities, and human sciences.  Presentations by medical practitioners, historians, social justice advocates, medical journalists, disability studies and narrative studies scholars will be interspersed with readings by poets and novelists, reports from the field, and a theatrical performance. This panel discussed "Medicine, Humanities, and the Human Sciences: A Historical Perspective."