Notes from the Sick Room by Steve Finbow, London: Repeater Books, 2017, 343 pages, £8.99. Reviewed by Alan Radley, Emeritus Professor of Social Psychology, Loughborough University This is a book about sickness, more specifically about the illnesses of a number of well-known artists and philosophers. It is also about the illness history of the book’s […]
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Auditory Hallucinations, Agoraphobia and Extremism as Portrayed by Actor Ahmed Magdy
In this podcast, our Screening Room editor, Khalid Ali, explores the role of film in shining a light on mental illlness, dysfunctional families, and the rise of religious fanaticism with Egyptian director Ahmed Magdy. Recently introduced to acting, Ahmed talks about his portrayal of three challenging characters: a young man imprisoned in his mother’s house in […]
Book Review: Deleuze and Baudrillard: From Cyberpunk to Biopunk
Deleuze and Baudrillard: From Cyberpunk to Biopunk by Sean McQueen, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016, 288 pages, £70. Reviewed by Dr Anna McFarlane (University of Glasgow) Sean McQueen’s first monograph ambitiously aims to create “a cognitive mapping of the transition from late capitalism to biocapitalism” (1) and to do this through tracing trends in science […]
A Summer of CfPs!
The medical humanities in the UK is seeing an explosion of opportunities at the moment with a number of events coming up and several calls for papers available for your consideration – so if you were worried that you might get bored over the summer then fear no more! I pulled these together with the […]
Exhibition Review: Transplant and Life
‘Transplant and Life’ Exhibition, Royal College of Surgeons, 22 November 2016 – 20 May 2017 John Wynne and Tim Wainwright Review by Emma Barnard Having on a couple of occasions visited the captivating, slightly morbid Hunterian Museum, housed in the majestic Royal College of Surgeons, Lincolns Inn Fields, my initial thoughts when being asked to […]
Long Read: What Does it Mean to Listen, and How Can it Be Learned?
Anders Juhl Rasmussen interviews Dr Rishi Goyal, Director of Medicine, Literature and Society and Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Medical Centre, and an attending physician in the Emergency Department at Columbia University. Goyal is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, and Rasmussen gives some observations from a recent teaching session […]
Book Review – Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England
Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England by Olivia Weisser, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015, 296 pages, £60. Reviewed by Sarah O’Dell, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA 91702, sodell10@apu.edu In this well-researched and compelling work, Olivia Weisser addresses the relative paucity of scholarship on early modern gender and illness to argue […]
Romanticizing Tubercolosis
Our screening editor, Dr Khalid Ali (Khalid.ali@bsuh.nhs.uk), here writes about the importance of Romanian director Radu Jude’s new film Scarred Hearts (Romania, 2016) and interviews him at the London Film Festival in the podcast included below. Each year on the 24th of March, several organizations around the world celebrate ‘International Tuberculosis Day’. It serves as a […]
New Blog Curator and Reviews Editor
I am Anna McFarlane, the new blog curator and reviews editor here at the BMJ Medical Humanities blog, and I wanted to introduce myself to regular readers – and first time visitors. I’m delighted to be taking on this post and would like to thank my predecessor, Columba Quigley, who has been answering all my […]
Book Review: The Mystery of Being Human
Raymond Tallis, The Mystery of Being Human: God, Freedom and the NHS. Notting Hill Editions, 2016. Reviewed by Dr Sara Booth This collection of essays – lucid, varied, compelling – is by retired academic geriatrician and neuroscientist Professor Raymond Tallis. A man who may truly be called a polymath, he is not […]