*This is an event of interest, with a former HHL artist-in-residence, Marina Tsaplina This community workshop will focus on how the deep prejudice in the national eugenics movement of the 1900s, including the North Carolina sterilization program, remains alive today even after the policies have been dismantled. Through a collaborative exploration of documents and images[...]

In this lecture, Nidesh Lawtoo revisits the legendary 1966 Johns Hopkins Conference, "The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man," an event which was meant to introduce structuralism in the US, yet ended up inaugurating what became known as poststructuralism instead. Adopting a comparative approach to two participants that are often considered as antipodes[...]

Twelve Step groups regularly describe alcohol and drug addiction as the “family illness,” due to the systematic way addiction takes destructive hold of nearly everyone who comes within range: not only people with SUD, themselves, but also their families and friends. Treatment programs (both inpatient and IOP) typically include components directed at families which offer[...]

The Duke Health Humanities Lab seeks participants for its third annual offering of the Chronic Health Conditions Storytelling (CHCS) group. Facilitated by Duke medical students Sam Hofacker, Megha Gupta, and Sarah Hodges, advised by faculty member Deborah Jenson, and assisted by Health Humanities Lab Manager and former Duke Disability Alliance president Cuquis Robledo, the group[...]

Imagine an efficient, proven process to increase wellness and build resilience.  Expressive writing is such a process and promises to help manage the challenges of our complex lives, including high stress, decreasing immune function, increasing chronic symptoms, deteriorating health, grief and overcoming trauma. It has been proven to increase immunity, improve overall health, and subsequently[...]

Narrative Medicine is a methodology and theoretical paradigm developed by Rita Charon to allow health care providers to better elicit, process, and integrate their patients’ stories into the health care trajectory, creating a structure of narrative affiliation between patient and clinician. The story loop is not limited to patients, either. “Each day,” Charon writes, “you[...]

What is the connection between Aristotle and Blade Runner? What do belated diagnoses of ADHD have to do with unexpected genetic test results? Danielle Spencer proposes the term metagnosis to describe the experience of learning of a longstanding undetected condition. In contrast to diagnosis, metagnosis effects a shift in the terms of knowledge, productively unsettling our understanding of medical knowledge, narrative, and identity. Just[...]

An Arts Performance on Dementia, “Vamping,” by Kali Quinn, followed by panel presentations and discussion with U. of Toronto  Medical Anthropologist Janelle Taylor, Jessica Ruhle (Director of Education and Public Programs at the Nasher, including “Reflections: The Nasher Museum’s Alzheimer’s Program), Lisa Gwyther (LCSW) , and the carer of a patient with dementia. The event will be[...]

Topic: Narrative Medicine What is narrative medicine, and how does it transform clinical and literary spaces? Neurologist and narrative medicine specialist Sneha Mantri dialogues with Deborah Jenson about her training in narrative medicine, how it enters her practice with patients living with Parkinson disease and other movement disorders, and how she envisions the future of the field. Date:  October[...]