The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction and Psychotherapy by Arabella Kurtz and J.M. Coetzee London: Harvill and Secker, 2015. Reviewed by Vivek Santayana, The University of Edinburgh Abstract: Arabella Kurtz and J.M. Coetzee’s The Good Story is a dialogue between a consulting clinical psychologist with an interest in literary studies and a […]
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The Reading Room: Seamus O’Mahony on Richard Asher
Brimful of Asher Seamus O’Mahony, Consultant Physician, Cork University Hospital Richard Asher: Talking Sense. London: Pitman Medical, 1972. A Sense of Asher. London: British Medical Association, 1984. The Royal Society of Medicine recently (3 November 2014 – 24 January 2015) held an exhibition called “Richard Asher (1912-1969): A Celebration”. Asher, an English physician […]
The Reading Room: A review of ‘Pain and Emotion in Modern History’
Pain and Emotion in Modern History. Boddice R (ed). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 Reviewed by Dr Deborah Padfield Visual Artist and Research Associate, UCL CHIRP Interdisciplinary Research Fellow, Slade School of Fine Art Pain and Emotion in Modern History claims to be ‘a rich exploration of the affective expression of pain, the emotional experience of […]
The Reading Room: The 2015 Hippocrates Poetry and Medicine Prize
The Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine is an annual international prize for an unpublished poem on a medical subject. It was launched in 2009 and consists of awards in three categories: An Open Category An NHS Category A Category for Young Poets (14-18 years). The 2015 judges were poets Rebecca Goss and Simon […]
Film Review: Mediterranea
Lambert Wilson, actor and musician, Master of Ceremonies of Cannes Film Festival 2014, said “The world is written in an incomprehensible language, but cinema translates it for us universally. Without its guiding light, each person would remain in isolated darkness”. Exactly a year later in May 2015, an Italian film “Mediterranea” directed by Jonas […]
Film Review: Alive Inside
It is because we live in a society where we tend to commit vulnerable members such as people with dementia to care institutions that we need documentaries like “Alive inside”. This very moving film, winner of the “Audience Award” at the Sundance Film Festival, 2014, follows a New York based social worker Dan Cohen as […]
The Reading Room: The Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group
The Birkbeck Medical Humanities reading group aims to create a space in which academics, clinicians and students can come together to explore key readings, ideas and materials in the field of medical humanities. Our endeavour is to find ways of talking across the different disciplines of the humanities and medicine, and we welcome participation […]
The Reading Room: Upcoming workshop on ageing
Medical Humanities and Ageing, 29/06/2015 An initiative of the CHCI Medical Humanities Network Program, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) Location: Old Committee Room, King’s Building, King’s College London, Strand Campus, Strand, London WC2R 2LSDate: Monday 29th June 2015 The Centre for the Humanities and Health, […]
The Reading Room: A review of ‘Health Humanities’
Health Humanities Paul Crawford, Brian Brown, Charley Baker, Victoria Tischler and Brian Abrams (London: Palgrave, 2015) Reviewed by Dr Maria Vaccarella, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Medical Humanities, Centre for the Humanities and Health, King’s College London In her foundational study Manifestoes: Provocations of the Modern (1999), Janet Lyon explains that “the manifesto both generates and […]
Mark Making: An Experience of Dementia and the Arts by Hannah Zeilig
Rose sensed that I was nervous. My façade of confidence was not convincing, I was holding my papers a little too defensively across my chest and my shoulders were tense. I stood awkwardly at the edge of the circle of people, feeling outside their camaraderie. It was strange but also salutary to feel an outsider […]