Conference Report: Empathies

‘Empathies: 11th Conference of the European Society for Literature and the Arts’, Basel University, 20-25th June 2017 By Anna McFarlane The ESLA conferences have been growing for a number of years, working alongside their sister organisation in America, the Society for Literature and the Arts to promote interdisciplinary communication through wide-ranging conferences that take one […]

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Wellcome Trust-funded Research Posts

Three new research posts have been announced for the project ‘People Like You’, a 4-year Wellcome Trust-supported Collaborative Project in the Medical Humanities awarded to Professors Sophie Day (Goldsmiths, Anthropology), Celia Lury (Warwick University, Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies) and Helen Ward (Imperial College London, School of Public Health). It aims to establish the cultural significance […]

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Fleeing a Spider’s Web

Enemy, directed by Denis Villeneuve, Canada-Spain, 2013 Reviewed by Dr Franco Ferrarini, Gastroenterologist and Film Reviewer   Adapted from Josè Saramago’s novel The Double, Enemy is an intriguing film directed by Denis Villeneuve. The film narrative employs multiple metaphors, embedded in a dream-like environment, which may be difficult to notice or fully understand at first […]

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Conference Reports: Accounts of Illness in Historical and Modern Texts

‘Accounts of Illness in Historical and Modern Texts: Exploring Methods in Medical Humanities Research Across the Disciplines’, University of Oxford, 27th June 2017 By Anna McFarlane The ‘Accounts of Illness’ conference was organised by Professor Katherine Southwood of Oxford University as a means of understanding the different methodologies used across the disciplines that intersect in […]

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Book Review: The Cognitive Humanities

Garratt, Peter., editor. The Cognitive Humanities: Embodied Mind in Literature and Culture edited by Peter Garratt, London: Palgrave, 2016. xvii + 259 pages, £66.99. Reviewed by David Rodriguez, Stony Brook University     It is a difficult task to collect work in a coherent introductory volume for a field as diverse, divisive, and multi-disciplinary as […]

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Primum Non Nocere: An Artist’s Perspective into the World of Medicine

This guest blog post comes from Emma Barnard, a London based visual artist specialising in lens-based media and interdisciplinary practice and research within Fine Art and Medicine. Her solo retrospective exhibition Primum Non Nocere, focuses on the patient experience. The show has its private viewing on the 15th September 18.00-21.00, and then runs from the 16th September […]

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Book Review: Caring Architecture

Caring Architecture: Institutions and Relational Practices by Catharina Nord and Ebba Högström, Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishers, 2017, 220 pages, £61.99. Reviewed by Cristin Sarg (University of Glasgow)     Caring Architecture: Institutions and Relational Practices is an edited collection by Catharina Nord and Ebba Högström that had its genesis in a session of the […]

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Life After Death

Dr. Anna Kuppuswamy is a neuroscientist at Queen Square, London. Salem, India is her maternal ancestral home and she regularly visits Salem where S. Kalaivani runs the Life Trust. What happens after you die, ironically, is possibly the most important part of your life, when one views life from an Indian perspective. This probably is […]

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Book Review: The New Mountaineer

The New Mountaineer in Late Victorian Britain by Alan McNee. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave, 2016, £66.99. Reviewed by Dr Douglas Small, University of Glasgow     The figure of the late-Victorian mountaineer – stalwart, resolute, determinedly pursuing his ascent with ice-axe and Manila hemp rope – might at first seem an unlikely individual to be of […]

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Book Review: To Be a Machine

  To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O’Connell, London: Granta, 2017, 244 pages, £12.99. Reviewed by Anna McFarlane, University of Glasgow Mark O’Connell’s To Be a Machine documents the writer’s encounters with a series of self-proclaimed ‘transhumanists’; those who subscribe to […]

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