We are pleased to offer for review ‘The Seven Good Years’ by Etgar Keret (Granta, 2015). Expressions of interest are welcome from across the medical humanities. Over the last seven years Etgar Keret has had plenty of reasons to worry. His son, Lev, was born in the middle of a terrorist attack in Tel Read more…
‘Depression in the Elderly’ by Patricia-Luciana Runcan (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013) Depression in the Elderly by Patricia-Luciana Runcan addresses the growing problem of clinical depression and its impact upon the lives of elderly Romanians. Romania is a nation that seems largely under-represented on the stage of global public health, and Read more…
This review of the Exhaustion conference appeared on the fantastic Sleep Cultures blog: “On 25 October 2013, the University of Kent hosted a one-day interdisciplinary conference on exhaustion, organized by Anna Katharina Schaffner (Comparative Literature, Kent) and funded by the Wellcome Trust, that brought together scholars from the arts, medicine, Read more…
Exhaustion Friday, 25 October, Cathedral Lodge, Canterbury Funded by the Wellcome Trust Organised by Anna Katharina Schaffner This interdisciplinary conference explores different medical, psychological and socio-political narratives on the origins of and cures for exhaustion. Experts from diverse disciplines (including psychiatrists, psychologists, social scientists, occupational health specialists, literary scholars and Read more…
Jonathan Gadsby, PhD candidate at Birmingham City University, reviews Steven Coles, Sarah Keenan and Bob Diamond, eds., Madness Contested: Power and Practice (Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books, 2013): It was impossible for me to read this new collection dispassionately and I will not be the only one. I found myself in turns Read more…
The School of Modern Languages and Cultures Literature, History, Theory Research Group presents Towards a Cultural History of Exhaustion Dr Anna Katharina Schaffner (Comparative Literature, University of Kent) Thursday 25 April, 5.00-7.00 pm A56 Elvet Riverside, Durham University This paper explores how ‘exhaustion’ – understood both as a subjective physico-psychological Read more…
Image: Sarah Brumgart In recent years I have become surrounded by yoga fanatics. Many things impress me about their relationship with yoga but, above all, it’s their dedication to telling me (and anybody else that will appear interested) just how great yoga is for them. Their proselytising eventually put me in Read more…
The Practical Art of Medicine: dissection, diagnosis and disease in the Early Modern Period is a ‘Spotlight’ exhibition in the Wolfson Gallery, Palace Green Library, Durham. It looks at the period between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries and its many advances in the study of anatomy, chemistry and physiology. Inspired Read more…
10:00 – 16:00 Monday 26 November 2012 The National Grid Room, Warwick Arts Centre University of Warwick, CV1 7AL The Anatomy of Melancholy is nearly 400 years old and 1500 pages long. It is an attempt to identify all forms of Melancholy, their causes, symptoms and cures. It is bizarre, Read more…
Clark Lawlor, From Melancholia to Prozac: A History of Depression (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Review by Angela Woods for the British Society for Literature and Science: What’s in a word? In his celebrated Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, William Styron protests most vehemently against the vocabulary of twentieth-century Read more…