Jefferson Humanities & Health Programs

Tuesday, October 14, 12-1p.m., Hamilton 224/225

Reading: an excerpt from Sex with a Brain Injury by Annie Liontas

Facilitator:

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

After suffering multiple concussions, Annie Liontas shares what it means to be one of the “walking wounded” in Sex with a Brain Injury. Liontas weaves history, philosophy, and personal accounts to interrogate and expand representations of mental health, ability, and disability—particularly in relation to women and the LGBT community. Liontas uncovers the surprising legacy of brain injury, examining its role in culture, the criminal justice system, and through historical figures like Henry VIII and Harriet Tubman. Facing fear, rage, physical suffering, and the effects of head trauma on their marriage and other relationships, Liontas reckons with their own queer mother’s battle with addiction and finds echoes in their pain. The hidden gift of injury, Liontas writes, is the ability to connect with others.

Tuesday, September 16, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: "Igniting our Power by Reclaiming Our Intimacy" by Ashley Volion and Akemi Nishida from Disability Intimacy: Essays on Love, Care, and Desire, edited by Alice Wong.

Facilitator:

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

What is intimacy? More than sex, more than romantic love, the pieces in this anthology offer broader and more inclusive definitions of what it can mean to be intimate with another person. Explorations of caregiving, community, access, and friendship offer us alternative ways of thinking about the connections we form with others—a vital reimagining in an era when forced physical distance is at times a necessary norm.

Monday, April 7, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: an excerpt from The Open Heart Club by Garbiel Brownstein.

Facilitator:

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Born in 1966 with a congenital heart defect known as the tetralogy of Fallot, Gabriel Brownstein entered the world just as doctors were learning to operate on conditions like his. He received a life-saving surgery at five years old, and since then has ridden wave after wave of medical innovation, a series of interventions that have kept his heart beating.

The Open Heart Club is both a memoir of a life on the edge of medicine's reach and a history of the remarkable people who have made such a life possible. It begins with the visionary anatomists of the seventeenth century, tells the stories of the doctors (all women) who invented pediatric cardiology, and includes the lives of patients and physicians struggling to understand the complexities of the human heart.

Tuesday, March 18, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: chapter 8 from the 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on Health in America by Linda Villarosa.

Facilitator:

Krys Foster, MD, MPH, Clinical Associate Professor, Associate Residency Program Director, Thomas Jefferson University.

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

In Under the Skin, Linda Villarosa lays bare the forces in the American health-care system and in American society that cause Black people to “live sicker and die quicker” compared to their white counterparts. Today’s medical texts and instruments still carry fallacious slavery-era assumptions that Black bodies are fundamentally different from white bodies. Study after study of medical settings show worse treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Black people live in dirtier, more polluted communities due to environmental racism and neglect from all levels of government. And, most powerfully, Villarosa describes the new understanding that coping with the daily scourge of racism ages Black people prematurely. Anchored by unforgettable human stories and offering incontrovertible proof, Under the Skin is dramatic, tragic, and necessary reading.

Thursday, February 27, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Chapter 2: Bones, from All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today by Elizabeth Comen, MD.

Facilitator:

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

For as long as medicine has been a practice, women's bodies have been treated like objects to be practiced on: examined and ignored, idealized and sexualized, shamed, subjugated, mutilated, and dismissed. The history of women’s healthcare is a story in which women themselves have too often been voiceless—a narrative instead written from the perspective of men who styled themselves as authorities on the female of the species, yet uninformed by women’s own voices, thoughts, fears, pain and experiences. The result is a cultural and societal leg­acy that continues to shape the (mis)treatment and care of women.

Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Dr. Elizabeth Comen draws back the curtain on the collective medical history of women—how they work, the actual doctors and patients whose perspectives and experiences laid the foundation for today’s medical thought, and the many oversights that still remain unaddressed. Dr. Comen follows the road map of the eleven organ systems to share unique and untold stories, drawing upon medical texts and journals, interviews with expert physicians, as well as her own experience treating thousands of women.

Tuesday, January 14, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: An excerpt from Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors by Susan Sontag

Facilitator:

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

In 1978, Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor, a classic work described by Newsweek as “one of the most liberating books of its time.” A cancer patient herself when she was writing the book, Sontag shows how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is—just a disease. Cancer, she argues, is not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment; and it is highly curable, if good treatment is followed.

Almost a decade later, with the outbreak of a new, stigmatized disease replete with mystifications and punitive metaphors, Sontag wrote a sequel to Illness as Metaphor, extending the argument of the earlier book to the AIDS pandemic.

These two essays now published together, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, have been translated into many languages and continue to have an enormous influence on the thinking of medical professionals and, above all, on the lives of many thousands of patients and caregivers.

Tuesday, December 3, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: An excerpt from Mary Jane by Amy Herzog

Facilitator:

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Join us for a discussion of an excerpt from the play Mary Jane by Amy Herzog.

Armed with medicines, feeding tubes, and various medical equipment, Mary Jane is a single mother and indefatigable force when it comes to caring for her young, sick child, Alex. As she navigates both the mundane and the unfathomable realities of caring for Alex, she finds herself building a community of care consisting of women from many walks of life.

Thursday, November 21, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: An excerpt from Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir by Walela Nehanda

Facilitator:

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Join us for a discussion of an excerpt from Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir by Walela Nehanda.

When Walela is diagnosed at twenty-three with advanced stage blood cancer, they’re suddenly thrust into the unsympathetic world of tubes and pills, doctors who don’t use their correct pronouns, and hordes of “well-meaning” but patronizing people offering unsolicited advice as they navigate rocky personal relationships and share their story online.

But this experience also deepens their relationship to their ancestors, providing added support from another realm. Walela’s diagnosis becomes a catalyst for their self-realization. As they fill out forms in the insurance office in downtown Los Angeles or travel to therapy in wealthier neighborhoods, they begin to understand that cancer is where all forms of their oppression intersect: Disabled. Fat. Black. Queer. Nonbinary.

Bless the Blood is Nehanda's account of their survival in spite of the U.S. medical system and their struggle to face death unafraid.

Monday, October 28, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: An excerpt from A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung

Facilitator:

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Join us for a discussion of an excerpt from A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung.

In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you’d hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them.

Nicole Chung couldn’t hightail it out of her overwhelmingly white Oregon hometown fast enough. As a scholarship student at a private university on the East Coast, no longer the only Korean she knew, she found community and a path to the life she'd long wanted. But the middle class world she begins to raise a family in – where there are big homes, college funds, nice vacations – looks very different from the middle class world she thought she grew up in, where paychecks have to stretch to the end of the week, health insurance is often lacking, and there are no safety nets.

When her father dies at only sixty-seven, killed by diabetes and kidney disease, Nicole feels deep grief as well as rage, knowing that years of precarity and lack of access to healthcare contributed to his early death. And then the unthinkable happens – less than a year later, her beloved mother is diagnosed with cancer, and the physical distance between them becomes insurmountable as COVID-19 descends upon the world.

Exploring the enduring strength of family bonds in the face of hardship and tragedy, A Living Remedy examines what it takes to reconcile the distance between one life, one home, and another – and sheds needed light on some of the most persistent and grievous inequalities in American society.

Tuesday, September 24, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: "Histories," The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine by Ricardo Nuila

Facilitator:

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Join us for a discussion with Dr. Ricardo Nuila on his book, The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine.

“Is expensive healthcare better or is it just more expensive? Can we trust public hospitals in America? Why can’t people access healthcare when America has so many entitlement programs?” These are some of the questions Ricardo Nuila poses in his book The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in AmericanMedicine. Nuila takes us inside the Harris Health System and Ben Taub Hospital, where he has practiced for more than a decade, and challenges the established idea that the only way to receive good healthcare is with good insurance. In this small group discussion with Dr. Nuila, we will discuss the introduction of his book, “Histories.” Participants are also invited to read an optional, supplemental reading assignment, “The Doctor,” a short story by writer and doctor Anton Chekhov, whose stories and letters inspired Nuila’s own writing.

Wednesday, April 10, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Three Poems

Facilitators:

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Join us for a discussion of three poems that explore the anger, frustration, confusions and triumphs of being a patient navigating chronic illness, covid, and disability.

“Incantation of the First Order” by Rita Dove

Rita Dove served as the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995 and is the author of seven books of poetry, two of fiction and one play. She has won numerous awards throughout her years of writing and teaching. “Incantation of the First Order” is a short, powerful poem she wrote during Covid.

“Patients” by Aurora Levins Morales

Aurora Levins Morales is a writer, visual artist, historian, teacher and activist who has authored seven books of poetry and essays. She writes about illness and healing and believes that stories are medicinal. She writes, “The stories we tell about our lives shape what we’re able to imagine, and what we can imagine determines what we can do.” Her poem “Patients” is from her 2013 book, Kindling: Writings on the Body. “Patients” interrogates what it means to be a patient under the care of the medical system.

“Triage” by Jody Chan

Jody Chan is a writer, organizer, Taiko drummer and therapist. Their poetry has won multiple awards including the Saint Lawrence Book Award and the Prix Trillium Award for their collection sick. In their first collection, impact statement, Chan used found material, from patient records to court documents in order to lay bare the history of psychiatric institutions. Writes one reviewer, “…Chan’s work is the courageous alternative future present we need.” “Triage” is a fast-paced fever dream of a poem about one woman’s walk home after being released from the hospital and all she encounters on her way.

Wednesday, March 20, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Introduction, Chapter 6: Homecoming, and pages 257 to 259 from Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine by Uché Blackstock, MD.

Facilitators:

Krys Foster, MD, MPH, Clinical Associate Professor, Associate Residency Program Director, Thomas Jefferson University.

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Join us for a discussion of an excerpt from Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine by Uché Blackstock, MD.

Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uché Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organization of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats tend to their patients and neighbors, host community health fairs, cure ills, and save lives.

What Dr. Uché Blackstock did not understand as a child—or learn about at Harvard Medical School, where she and her sister had followed in their mother’s footsteps, making them the first Black mother-daughter legacies from the school—were the profound and long-standing systemic inequities that mean just 2 percent of all U.S. physicians today are Black women; the racist practices and policies that ensure Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country; and the flawed system that endangers the well-being of communities like theirs. As an ER physician, and later as a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Blackstock became profoundly aware of the systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians continue to face.

Legacy is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare. At once a searing indictment of our healthcare system, a generational family memoir, and a call to action, Legacyis Dr. Blackstock’s odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician—to finally seizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Tuesday, February 6, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: The title essay  from Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polley

Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Join us for a discussion of the title essay from Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory by Sarah Polley, Academy Award-winning filmmaker of Women Talking.

Sarah Polley explores what it is to live in one’s body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing. Each of these six essays captures a piece of Polley’s life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a “reciprocal pressure dance.”

Polley contemplates stories from her own life ranging from stage fright to high-risk childbirth to endangerment and more. After struggling with the aftermath of a concussion, Polley met a specialist who gave her wholly new advice: to recover from a traumatic injury, she had to retrain her mind to strength by charging towards the very activities that triggered her symptoms. With riveting clarity, she shows the power of applying that same advice to other areas of her life in order to find a path forward, a way through. Rather than live in a protective crouch, she had to run towards the danger.

Tuesday, January 9, 12-1p.m., Hamilton 224/225

Reading: "Anatomy" and "Extraordinary Measure" from A History of Present Illness by Anna DeForest.

Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

The Health Humanities Reading Group kicks off with a discussion from a selection from A History of Present Illness by Anna DeForest.

A young woman puts on a white coat for her first day as a student doctor. So begins this powerful debut, which follows our unnamed narrator through cadaver dissection, surgical rotation, difficult births, sudden deaths, and a budding relationship with a seminarian.

In the troubled world of the hospital, where the language of blood tests and organ systems so often hides the heart of the matter, she works her way from one bed to another, from a man dying of substance use and tuberculosis, to a child in pain crisis, to a young woman, fading from confusion to aphasia to death. The long hours and heartrending work begin to blur the lines between her new life as a physician and the lifelong traumas she has fled.

A meditation on the body, the hope of healing in the face of total loss, and what it means to be alive.

Reading Time: Approximately 25 minutes.

Tuesday, September 26, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Chapter 1, "Is There a Doctor?" and Chapter 5, "Sometimes Like Pearls" from Black Jack, Vol. 1

Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

The Health Humanities Reading Group kicks off with a discussion from a selection from Black Jack, Vol. 1, the iconic manga series by Osamu Tezuka.

Black Jack is a mysterious and charismatic young genius surgeon who travels the world performing amazing and impossible medical feats. Though a trained physician, he refuses to accept a medical license due to his hatred and mistrust of the medical community's hypocrisy and corruption. This leads Black Jack to occasional run-ins with the authorities, as well as from gangsters and criminals who approach him for illegal operations.

Black Jack charges exorbitant fees for his services, the proceeds from which he uses to fund environmental projects and to aid victims of crime and corrupt capitalists. But because Black Jack keeps his true motives secret, his ethics are perceived as questionable and he is considered a selfish, uncaring devil. 

Publisher's Weekly calls Black Jack "medical drama (think a manga House) with philosophy...With genre-spanning stories—horror, sci-fi, romance—and Tezuka's signature blend of drama, bathos and extreme broad comedy jammed together on every page, Black Jack is a wild but extravagantly entertaining ride."

Reading Time: Approximately 15-20 minutes

Tuesday, October 24, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Chapter 7, "Medicine," from Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

In this story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner, singer and guitarist of alternative pop band Japanese Breakfast, tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. 

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Tuesday, November 21, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Introduction and Chapter 4: "Life Out of Balance," from The Scalpel and The Silver Bear by Lori Arviso Alford, MD and Elizabeth Cohen Van Pelt

Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

The first Navajo woman surgeon combines western medicine and traditional healing. 

The Scalpel and the Silver Bear describes surgeon Lori Arviso Alvord's struggles to bring modern medicine to the Navajo reservation in Gallup, New Mexico—and to bring the values of her people to a medical care system in danger of losing its heart.

Dr. Alvord left a dusty reservation in New Mexico for Stanford University Medical School, becoming the first Navajo woman surgeon. Rising above the odds presented by her own culture and the male-dominated world of surgeons, she returned to the reservation to find a new challenge. In dramatic encounters, Dr. Alvord witnessed the power of belief to influence health, for good or for ill. She came to merge the latest breakthroughs of medical science with the ancient tribal paths to recovery and wellness, following the Navajo philosophy of a balanced and harmonious life, called Walking in Beauty. And now, in bringing these principles to the world of medicine, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear joins those few rare works, such as Healing and the Mind, whose ideas have changed medical practices-and our understanding of the world.

Tuesday, December 5, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Chapter 8:  "Damaged Goods," Chapter 24: "Done," and Chapter 25: "The In-Between Place," from Between Two Worlds: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad.

Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. A few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, she was diagnosed with leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. 

When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives.

Wednesday, January 11, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: "Pig Son," How High We Go In the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

How High We Go In the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsuis a science fiction novel set in the not-too-distant future. The plot is set off when a devastating and ancient virus is released by the thawing of arctic permafrost. "Pig Son" is a chapter in the book that tells the story of a group of medical scientists tasked with growing organs in animals for children sick with the virus. It is a moving and humane exploration of the ethical and emotional consequences of their work. 

Monday, January 23, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: "The six intentional activities which create happiness"  from Happiness: the scientific path to achieving  well-being by Dr. Vincenzo Berghella, MD

Facilitator:Vincenzo Berghella, MD, Professor, SKMC, Director, Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine, Director, Maternal-Fetal Medicine Fellowship Program, Maternal-Fetal Medicine

Happiness is up to you! What are the keys to happiness? What does the scientific evidence says about what truly makes us happy? Social relations and love will be included in the discussion.

Dr. Vincenzo Berghella will discuss his book, Happiness: the scientific path to achieving well-being, which reviews the scientific evidence behind what makes people happy, and the steps which we should take to achieve well-being. 

Wednesday, February 8, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Chapters 2, 7 and 8 of That Time I Got Cancer: A Love Story by Jim Zervanos

Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Join us for a conversation with author Jim Zervanos on his memoir, That Time I Got Cancer: A Love Story.

One minute Jim Zervanos was carrying his one-year-old boy to a baseball game; the next, he was in the ER, where for days he lay in limbo, being strangled from the inside. Teams of the best doctors were stumped by his worsening condition, before telling him there was nothing they could do.

That Time I Got Cancer: A Love Story is about experiencing joy even in desperate times. It’s about the relationships that anchor us, even as they must be entirely redefined. At forty-one, married, with a young son, Jim said goodbye to his family. When a brilliant new surgeon performed a radical operation, Jim was diagnosed with lymphoma, which led to chemotherapy and an uncertain road to recovery. Five years would pass before Jim began to understand what he had endured. Through mortality and back to life, this is the inspiring journey of a man awakened to the full experience of being alive, and being present for it all.

Tuesday, March 21, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Excerpts from The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde and The Undying by Anne Boyer

Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of Audre Lorde’s experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women’s pain, Lorde questioned the rules of conformity for women’s body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthesis. Living as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Lorde heals and re-envisions herself on her own terms and offers her voice, grief, resistance, and courage to those dealing with their own diagnosis. 

A week after her forty-first birthday, the acclaimed poet Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver rather than the one needing care, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness. 

A twenty-first-century Illness as Metaphor, as well as a harrowing memoir of survival, The Undying by Anne Boyer explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain ”dolorists,” the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. It excoriates the pharmaceutical industry and the bland hypocrisies of ”pink ribbon culture” while also diving into the long literary line of women writing about their own illnesses and ongoing deaths: Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Susan Sontag, and others.

Monday, September 26, 12-1p.m. Scott Memorial Library, 200A

Reading: “Real Women have Bodies,” a short story from Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf Press, 2017). In this short story, a mysterious outbreak causes some women’s bodies to gradually fade out of sight. Join us for a discussion of this intriguing story centered around bodies, invisibility, domestic trauma and a very specific pandemic. Machado pushes at real world issues using literary tropes of humor, horror and fantasy and her stories always provoke rich discussion.

Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Monday, October 3, 12-1p.m., Scott Memorial Library, 200A

Reading/Listening:Reading/Listening:

• ‘Henrietta Lacks’: A Donor’s Immortal Legacy, interview with Rebecca Skloot on Fresh Air (2010) (audio: 37min)
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Henrietta Lacks And Race,” The Atlantic, February 2010. (read: 4min)
• Time: 40 min of reading and listening

The Health Humanities Reading Group explores the life and legacy of Henrietta Lacks, whose cervical cells, taken and used without her knowledge, have played a role in modernity as we know it: from vaccines to medicine to space travel. Lacks’ story is unique but also representative of the pervasive mistreatment of Black people by institutions of medicine, science, education, and healthcare.

Special guest discussant: Ana Mari­a Lopez, MD, MPH, MACP, Professor and Vice Chair, Medical Oncology, Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Chief of Cancer Services, Jefferson Health New Jersey, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Monday, November 21, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library, Room 200A

Reading: “Joshua: Under Contract,” a chapter from The Beauty in the Breaking: A Memoir (Penguin, 2020) by Michele Harper. Join a discussion about one night of Harper's ER work in a Veterans' hospital and how two very different patients helped her change her thinking about what it means to "cure" someone. She also discusses the difficulties of everyday life outside her work at the hospital and how to find peace in those places.

Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

• Monday, January 31, 12-1 p.m., Online via Zoom
  Reading: William Carlos Williams, “The Use of Force,” first published in 1938, from The Doctor Stories (New York: New Directions, 1984). 
  Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College
  
  Join a small group discussion about the short text “The Use of Force” by poet and physician William Carlos Williams. The story focuses on the interaction between a doctor and a determined child patient, giving insight into the doctor’s perspective as he navigates a stubborn patient and her potential life-threatening illness, and his own judgment.

• Monday, February 21, 12-1 p.m., Hamilton 210/211
  Reading: “Eight Bites” in Machado, Carmen Maria. (2017). Her Body and Other Parties. Graywolf Press.
  Time: 20 min read
  Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College
  
  This week, HHRG will use fiction to discuss nuances around health and bodies. The selected short story “Eight Bites” follows a narrator who elects to get bariatric surgery after her three sisters have undergone the procedure (and claim that it changed their lives), stirring up themes of body image, self-hate, and weight-loss culture.

• Monday, February 28, 12-1 p.m., Hamilton 224/225 
  Reading: A selection of poems from Laura Kolbe's Little Pharma
  Facilitator: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

• Tuesday, March 22, 12-1 p.m., Online via Zoom
  Reading: Marilisa C. Navarro, “Radical Recipe: Veganism as Anti-Racism”
  Time: 18 min read
  
  Special guest discussant: Marilisa C. Navarro, PhD, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, College of Humanities and Sciences, Thomas Jefferson University.
  
  This week, HHRG will discuss anti-racism in relation to food, foodways, veganism and cookbooks. Special guest discussant Dr. Marilisa Navarro will join the group in considering how two cookbooks—Afro-Vegan by Bryant Terry and Decolonize Your Diet by Luz Calvo and Catriona Esquibel—go beyond conveying recipes to produce knowledge, critique racism and colonialism, deconstruct the white-centric veganism narrative, and highlight the voices, histories and experiences of people of color. 

Art and Care with Anne Basting

Wednesday, February 10, 12-1 p.m., Zoom

Reading: Chapter 11: “From Islands to Archipelagos“ in Basting, Anne (2020). Creative Care: A Revolutionary Approach to Dementia and Elder Care. HarperOne.

Time: 10 min read

This week, HHRG will be joined by artist, scholar, and TimeSlips founder Anne Basting to discuss a chapter in her new book “Creative Care” that details the project, “the Islands of Milwaukee,” that Basting and other artist and organizational collaborators initiated in her hometown of Milwaukee. The Islands of Milwaukee approached the crisis of social isolation in elderly communities by engaging with older folks who live on their own around the city—inviting them to respond to a question a day and turning it into a larger creative call and response project that sought to bring meaning and connection to people in their homes.

Special guest discussant: Anne Basting is an artist, scholar, and educator committed to the power of the arts and culture to transform our lives as individuals and communities. She is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and founder and President of the award-winning non-profit TimeSlips.

Monday, March 1, 12-1 p.m., Zoom

Reading: Three poems from The Tradition by Jericho Brown, this year’s pick for One Book One Philadelphia through the Free Library of Philadelphia. 

1. Jericho Brown, "Bullet Points" from The Tradition
2. Jericho Brown, "Crossing" from The Tradition
3. Jericho Brown, "I Know What I Love" from The Tradition

From publisher Copper Canyon Press: Beauty abounds in Jericho Brown’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection, despite and inside of the evil that pollutes the everyday. A National Book Award finalist, The Tradition questions why and how we’ve become accustomed to terror: in the bedroom, the classroom, the workplace, and the movie theater. From mass shootings to rape to the murder of unarmed people by police, Brown interrupts complacency by locating each emergency in the garden of the body, where living things grow and wither—or survive. In the urgency born of real danger, Brown’s work is at its most innovative. His invention of the duplex—a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues—is an all-out exhibition of formal skill, and his lyrics move through elegy and memory with a breathless cadence. Jericho Brown is a poet of eros: here he wields this power as never before, touching the very heart of our cultural crisis.

Special guest discussant: Ana Mari­a Lopez, MD, MPH, MACP, Professor and Vice Chair, Medical Oncology, Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Chief of Cancer Services, Jefferson Health New Jersey, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Monday, March 15, 12-1 p.m., Zoom

Reading: Michael Chabon, "The Recipe for Life," The New Yorker, January 2018.

Leading up to Michael Chabon’s visit, the Health Humanities Reading Group will discuss one of Chabon’s shorter nonfiction pieces exploring themes of parenthood, childhood, and imagination. 

Special guest discussant: Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Lecturer of Writing and Rhetoric, Thomas Jefferson University.

Monday, March 22, 12-1 p.m., Zoom

Reading: Marilisa C. Navarro, “Radical Recipe: Veganism as Anti-Racism”

Time: 18 min read

This week, HHRG will discuss anti-racism in relation to food, foodways, veganism and cookbooks. Special guest discussant Dr. Marilisa Navarro will join the group in considering how two cookbooks—Afro-Vegan by Bryant Terry and Decolonize Your Diet by Luz Calvo and Catriona Esquibel—go beyond conveying recipes to produce knowledge, critique racism and colonialism, deconstruct the white-centric veganism narrative, and highlight the voices, histories and experiences of people of color.

Special guest discussant: Marilisa C. Navarro, PhD, Assistant Professor of African American Studies, College of Humanities and Sciences, Thomas Jefferson University.

Monday, August 10, 12-1 p.m.

Reading: Chapter 5: "Dominic: Body of Evidence" in Harper, Michele. (2020). The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir. Penguin.

Leading up to StoryCorps founder Dave Isay’s visit on 9/16, the Health Humanities Reading Group will be considering a selection of personal stories related to health and social care. Chapter 5 of Dr. Michele Harper’s memoir, The Beauty in Breaking, details her experience as an emergency medicine physician in Philadelphia who refuses to engage in an unlawful medical examination of a Black man brought to the ER by police on suspicion of drug possession. Read more about Michele Harper’s memoir in The New York Times here. 

Monday, August 17, 12-1 p.m.

Reading: Chapter 3: "Matched-Pair" in El-Sayed, Abdul. (2020). Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic. Abrams Press.

Leading up to StoryCorps founder Dave Isay’s visit on 9/16, the Health Humanities Reading Group will be considering a selection of personal stories related to health and social care. Chapter 3 of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s memoir, Healing Politics, describes how his childhood experience with racism and Islamophobia influenced his decision to become an epidemiologist, physician, and activist, and how practicing Islam informs his work.

Monday, August 24, 12-1 p.m.

Reading/Listening:

• StoryCorps Podcast, “From One Essential Worker to Another" (audio: 14min)
• Humans of the Hospital, COVID Stories: A Surgical ICU Nurse's Wedding? Not So Fast. (audio: 7min)
• Jefferson Covid Stories (written: 10-15 min of site and story perusal)

Leading up to StoryCorps founder Dave Isay’s visit on 9/16, the Health Humanities Reading Group will be considering a selection of personal stories related to health and social care. This week’s readings focus on stories of healthcare providers and other essential workers coping with life during the pandemic. 

Special guest discussant: Danielle Snyderman, MD, Assistant Professor of Family and Community Medicine, Sidney Kimmel Medical College

Monday, September 21, 12-1 p.m.

Reading: Watson, Katie. (2011). “Serious Play: Teaching Medical Skills with Improvisation Theater Techniques.” Academic Medicine, 86 (10), p. 1260-1265. 

In "Serious Play," Professor Katie Watson, lawyer and bioethicist, describes her medical improv course at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and presents the importance of introducing medical students to improvisational technique and practice. Watson argues that improv develops active listening, collaboration, observation, and one's propensity to deal with unpredictability—all integral, and often untaught, skills needed for well-rounded medical practice.

Special guest discussant: Katie Watson, JD, Associate Professor of Medical Social Sciences, Medical Education and Obstetrics and Gynecology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University

Monday, September 28, 12-1 p.m.

Reading/Listening:

• ‘Henrietta Lacks’: A Donor’s Immortal Legacy interview with Rebecca Skloot on Fresh Air (2010) (audio: 37min)
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Henrietta Lacks And Race,” The Atlantic, February 2010. (read: 4min)

Leading up to 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jone’s visit on 10/14, HHRG will pay particular attention to race in medicine, health equity, and education. This week, the Health Humanities Reading Group explores the life and legacy of Henrietta Lacks, whose cervical cells, taken and used without her knowledge, have played a role in modernity as we know it: from vaccines to medicine to space travel. Lacks’ story is unique but also representative of the pervasive mistreatment of Black people by institutions of medicine, science, education, and healthcare.

Special guest discussant: Ana Mari­a Lopez, MD, MPH, MACP, Professor and Vice Chair, Medical Oncology, Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Chief of Cancer Services, Jefferson Health New Jersey, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center

Monday, October 12, 12-1 p.m.

Reading: Ray, Keisha. (2019). The Power of Black Patients' Testimonies When Teaching Medical Racism. In O. Banner, N. Carlin, T. R. Cole (Eds.), Teaching Health Humanities (p. 129-141). Oxford.

Leading up to 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jone’s visit on 10/14, HHRG will pay particular attention to race in medicine, health equity, and education. This week, Dr. Keisha Ray, PhD, joins HHRG to discuss how incorporating Black patients’ testimonies into health education allows students to grasp both the historical and present forms of medical racism, and become better providers for a population long disenfranchised by healthcare. Dr. Ray's chapter also suggests that proper medical racism education has the power to improve care and patient compliance, especially for Black patients, and complicate notions of empathy and intersectionality in healthcare professions.

Special guest discussant: Keisha S. Ray, PhD, Assistant Professor, McGovern Center for Humanities & Ethics at McGovern Medical School, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

Monday, November 2, 12-1 p.m.

Readings:

1] Alexander, Stephon. (2016). Introduction to The Jazz of physics: the secret link between music and the structure of the universe (pp. 1-9). Basic Books.

2] Haidet, Paul. (2007). Jazz and the ‘art’ of medicine: improvisation in the medical encounter. Annals of Family Medicine, 5(2). 164–169.

In anticipation of theoretical physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander’s visit on 11/11, HHRG will consider improvisational technique in healthcare, science, and music. Improvisation is essential to fine-tuning communication, listening, and research skills and providing truly patient-centered care.

Special guest discussant: Debra Lew Harder, MD, DMA, Medicine + Music, Office of Academic Affairs, Sidney Kimmel Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University.

Monday, November 9, 12-1 p.m.

Readings:

1] "Life During Covid-19" Preliminary Findings Report by Jefferson MPH student researchers Julianne LaRosa, Cierrah Doran, Amanda Guth, et al.  

2] Bugos, Eva, Rosemary Frasso, et al. “Practical Guidance and Ethical Considerations for Studies Using Photo Elicitation Interviews.” Preventing Chronic Disease 11, no. E189 (2014): 1-9. 

This week, HHRG probes the ethics and practice of “photo-elicitation,” a qualitative interviewing technique in which researchers ask community members to photograph their environment, and then use the images to guide in-depth interviews. HHRG will be joined by Dr. Rosemary (Rosie) Frasso, PhD, CPH, Public Health Program Director, and current MPH Students Julianne LaRosa (Jules), Cierrah Doran, and Amanda Guth. The guests will discuss the photo-elicitation project that they initiated at the start of the pandemic, intending to document the student experience of transitioning to online learning and adjusting to new living arrangements.

Special guest discussants: Rosemary (Rosie) Frasso, PhD, CPH, Associate Professor and Program Director, Public Health, Jefferson College of Population Health, and current MPH Students Julianne LaRosa (Jules), Cierrah Doran and Amanda Guth

Monday, November 16, 12:15-1 p.m.

Reading: Christina N. Armenta and Sonja Lyubomirksy, “How Gratitude Motivates Us to Become Better People,” Greater Good Magazine, May 2017.

This week, HHRG will be joined by Dr. Don Friedman to discuss gratitude and how it is an active force that can motivate us to improve our own situation, feel invested in and connected to others, and become healthier, more generous people. During the session, Dr. Friedman will lead an exercise in creating and using a gratitude journal. 

Special guest discussant: Donald M. Friedman, M.D. is a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Sidney Kimmel Medical College.

Monday, November 30, 12-1 p.m.

Reading: Haines, Christopher. (2020). July 2020 in “COVID-19 Essays from the Front: The first six months” (pp. 91-122).

This week, Dr. Christopher Haines joins HHRG to discuss his recently published book “COVID-19 Essays from the Front,” a diligent account of the science, medicine, and history behind the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Haines uses personal experience as a healthcare provider to document this fraught social and medical moment thoughtfully and with care.

Special guest discussant: Christopher Haines, MD, MA is an assistant professor of family medicine, geriatric medicine, and physiology at Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Haines directs his department’s inpatient hospital service, and in 2020 led his department’s inpatient response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Monday, January 13, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library, 200A

Reading: Tommy Orange, There There: A Novel (New York: Vintage, 2019), Prologue & Part 1: Remain, pgs. 1-78.

There There is this year’s chosen text for One Book, One Philadelphia. An initiative through the Free Library of Philadelphia, One Book offers eight weeks of free programming exploring There There, Lenape history, Indigenous erasure, and the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism. Tap into the incredible programming taking place here, including book circles, panel discussions, film screenings, art workshops, cooking demos, performances, throughout all 54 Free Library locations and at schools and partner organizations.

Monday, January 27, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Tommy Orange, There There: A Novel (New York: Vintage, 2019), Part 2: Reclaim, pgs. 79-155.

Monday, February 3, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Tommy Orange, There There: A Novel (New York: Vintage, 2019), Part 3: Return, pgs. 156-225.

Monday, February 10, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Tommy Orange, There There: A Novel (New York: Vintage, 2019), Part 4: Powwow, pgs. 226-290.

Special Guest: Adam DePaul

Monday, February 17, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

*content warning* These materials contain information about sensitive topics, such as sexual assault, which may be difficult for some people to address.

Reading: Watch the 2019 Netflix mini-series, Unbelievable.

Optional reading, and for those who do not have Netflix access: Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller, "An Unbelievable Story of Rape," The Marshall Project, March 2009.

Monday, February 24, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Michael Chabon, "The Recipe for Life," The New Yorker, January 2018.

Monday, March 16, 12-1 p.m., ONLINE

Reading: Allison B. Kavey, "A Brief History of Love: A Rationale for the History of Epidemics," in Health Humanities Reader (New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2016), pgs. 430-441. 

Monday, March 23, 12-1 p.m., ONLINE

Reading: David S. Jones, “History in a Crisis — Lessons for Covid-19,” in The New England Journal of Medicine, March 2020.

Monday, March 30, 12-1 p.m., ONLINE

Reading: Claire Schwartz, “& the Truth Is, I Have No Story,” in Not That Bad, ed. Roxane Gay (Harper Perennial, 2018), pgs. 33-47.

Monday, April 6, 12-1 p.m., ONLINE

Reading: Michelle Chen, “Bodies Against Borders,” in Not That Bad, ed. Roxane Gay (Harper Perennial, 2018), pgs. 189-202.

Monday, September 9, 12-1 p.m., Hamilton Building 210/211

Reading: Tia Powell, “Ch. 10: Laborers of Love,” Dementia Reimagined: Building a Life of Joy and Dignity from Beginning to End, New York: Avery, 2019.

Monday, September 23, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Tia Powell, “Ch. 11: Try a Little Tenderness,” Dementia Reimagined: Building a Life of Joy and Dignity from Beginning to End, New York: Avery, 2019.

Monday, October 7, 12-1 p.m., Edison Building 1402

Reading: Erika Hayasaki, “In a Perpetual Present,” Wired, April 2016.

**CANCELLED**Monday, October 14, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: The 1619 Project, Episode 4: How the Bad Blood Started

Monday, October 21, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Ch. 1, “The Birth of American Gynecology,” in Deirdre Cooper Owens, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2017.

Monday, October 28, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Ch. 2, “Black Women’s Experiences in Slavery and Medicine,” in Deirdre Cooper Owens, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 2017.

Monday, November 4, 12-1 p.m., Hamilton 504

Reading: Liliana Velasquez, Dreams and Nightmares/Sueños y Pesadillas, edited and translated by Mark Lyons, Anderson, SC: Parlor Press, 2017: Pages 9-111 (Introduction, Prologue, "Guatemala," and "My Journey")

*Please note that this book is bilingual with English and Spanish on facing pages.

Monday, November 18, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Liliana Velasquez, Dreams and Nightmares/Sueños y Pesadillas, edited and translated by Mark Lyons, Anderson, SC: Parlor Press, 2017: Pages 117-205 ("Philadelphia," "Reflections," and "Finally, I Have Told My Story")

*Please note that this book is bilingual with English and Spanish on facing pages.

Monday, November 25, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Jennifer M. Booker, The New Normal: Coming Out as Transgender in Midlife,” The Unbound Press, 2019: Chapter 5 (Hormones are Fun!)

Monday, December 2, 12-1 p.m., Hamilton 210/211

Reading: Jennifer M. Booker, The New Normal: Coming Out as Transgender in Midlife,” The Unbound Press, 2019: Chapter 7 (Gender Confirmation)

Monday, December 9, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Jennifer M. Booker, The New Normal: Coming Out as Transgender in Midlife,” The Unbound Press, 2019: Chapter 6 (Coming Out)

Monday, June 3, 11 a.m.-12 p.m., Curtis 213

Reading: Yu, E. (2019, April 1). Instagram and Snapchat are ruining our memories. VICE.

Monday, June 10, 11 a.m.-12 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Leadbeater, C. (2015, March 26). The disremembered. Aeon. 

Monday, June 24, 11 a.m.-12 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Kleinfield, N.R. (2016, May 1). Fraying at the edges. The New York Times.

Monday, July 1, 11 a.m-12 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A

Reading: Hammer, J. (2012). Absolute personhood in those with dementia. Georgetown University Journal of Health Sciences, 6(2).

Monday, January 14

Reading: Ward, Jesmyn. Chapters 1-4 from Sing, Unburied, Sing. New York: Scribner, 2017.

To commemorate One Book, One Philadelphia--The Free Library of Philadelphia's signature event--the Health Humanities Reading Group will be discussing this year's chosen book: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. One Book, One Philadelphia is an annual event  that promotes literacy, library usage, and citywide conversation by encouraging the entire greater Philadelphia area to come together through reading and discussing a single book. The 2017 National Book Award winner Sing, Unburied, Sing is an American road novel about a family's journey from their Gulf Coast town to the Mississippi State Penitentiary.

Our January 14 discussion will pay special attention to Chapter 4 (Leonie). This chapter addresses the following themes: the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, prison violence, the use of plants and herbs for healing.

Monday, January 28, 12-1 p.m.

Reading: Ward, Jesmyn. Sing, Unburied, Sing. New York: Scribner, 2017.

To commemorate One Book, One Philadelphia--The Free Library of Philadelphia's signature event--the Health Humanities Reading Group will be discussing this year's chosen book: Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. One Book, One Philadelphia is an annual event  that promotes literacy, library usage, and citywide conversation by encouraging the entire greater Philadelphia area to come together through reading and discussing a single book. The 2017 National Book Award winner Sing, Unburied, Sing is an American road novel about a family's journey from their Gulf Coast town to the Mississippi State Penitentiary.

Our January 28 discussion will cover the book, broadly, with special attention to Chapters 12 and 15. Chapter 12 (Richie) explores Richie’s vision of the land and follows Leonie into the graveyard. The novel’s title takes on its full meaning in this haunting and lyrical final chapter, Chapter 15 (Jojo).

Monday, February 4, 12-1 p.m.

Reading: Scranton, Roy. (2015). Introduction: Coming Home. In Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization (pp. 13-28). San Francisco: City Lights Publishers.

Coming home from the war in Iraq, U.S. Army private Roy Scranton thought he'd left the world of strife behind. Then he watched as new calamities struck America, heralding a threat far more dangerous than ISIS or Al Qaeda: Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, mega-drought—the shock and awe of global warming.

Discussion questions:

1. Scranton describes the term and concept of the "Anthropocene." What does it mean to you to live during this (proposed) era in geological and human history? How does the idea of this era change your perspective on anything?

2. Scranton’s discussion of "learning to die" echoes our conversations last semester on death and dying, although he extends discussion of death to fossil fuel civilization as a whole. How does climate change and a changing planet affect how we might collectively understand and approach death?

Monday, February 11, 12-1 p.m.

Reading: Lemery, Jay & Auerbach, Paul. (2017). Excerpts from Enviromedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health (pp. 1-5, 47-51, 133-137). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

By weighing in from a physician’s perspective, Jay Lemery and Paul Auerbach try to clarify the science, dispel the myths, and help readers understand the threats of climate change to human health. No better argument exists for persuading people to care about climate change than a close look at its impacts on our physical and emotional well-being.

Discussion Questions:

1. What do you think is (or could/should be) the role of health care practitioners in preventing and preparing for the impacts of climate change on human health?

2. Mental health: What do you think is the role of trauma-informed care in response to severe weather events, and to climate-induced migration/refugees?

Monday, February 25, 12-1 p.m.

Reading: Atwood, Margaret. (2015, July 27). It's Not Climate Change — It's Everything Change [animations by Carl Burton]. Medium.

Atwood revisits a piece of speculative writing from 2009 entitled “The Future Without Oil.” Six years later, she reflects on the potential for changing cultural values to prepare for such a future. [This piece is accompanied by pictures and animated graphics.]

Monday, March 4, 12-1 p.m.

Reading: Clare, Eli. (2017). Notes on Natural Worlds, Disabled Bodies, and a Politics of Cure. In Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-Crip Theory (pp. 242-267). Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press.

Writing from a disabled and genderqueer perspective, Clare draws parallels between ways that bodies are categorized as normal, abnormal, natural and unnatural, and attitudes toward the environment and biodiversity.

Monday, March 18, 12-1 p.m.

Reading 1: D’Souza, Radha. (2017). Listening to the Elders at the Keepers of the Water Gathering. In Downstream: Reimagining Water (pp. 197-206). Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Discussion question:

What do you make of the following passage from the article. How does this relate to discussions of autonomy and rights in health and health care?

“When they spoke about water, the Elders were clear that water could not be separated from land or people because their emphasis was on the relationship. Strictly speaking, therefore, they were not speaking about ‘right to water’ at all but rather about their right to reproduce the conditions of life, which was neither reducible to water or land nor separable from them.” (p. 202)

Reading 2: Robbins, Jim. (2016, March 28). Is Climate Change Putting World’s Microbiomes at Risk? Yale Environment 360.

Discussion question:

In clinical settings and in popular media, except for recent attention given to the positive role of the human intestinal microbiome, we have tended to focus on the harm of “germs” to human health. What are ways that we might reframe discussions of these unseen microbial lifeforms to emphasize the benefits—to human and other life—of a shared world that supports microbial diversity?

Monday, March 25, 12-1 p.m.

Reading: Nixon, Rob. (2011). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (pp. 1-16)

Nixon outlines his concept of “slow violence,” an incremental form of destruction that characterizes environmental degradation, economic extraction and other forms of harm that unfold gradually over time. Nixon explores how slow violence often claims impoverished communities as its victims and is perpetrated by corporate and human actors of relative wealth and power. He considers how slow violence can be made more visible through acts of representation including writing and media production.  

Monday, April 1, 12-1 p.m.

Reading: Van Dooren, Thom. (2014). Mourning Crows: Grief in a Shared World. In Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (pp. 125-144). New York: Columbia University Press.

Van Dooren intimately explores what life is like for those who must live on the edge of extinction, balanced between life and oblivion, taking care of their young and grieving their dead […] No longer abstract entities with Latin names, these species become fully realized characters enmeshed in complex and precarious ways of life, sparking our sense of curiosity, concern, and accountability toward others in a rapidly changing world.

Discussion question:

Van Dooren challenges us to “come to inhabit a meaningfully shared world” (p. 140) with more-than-human life. In this article, he illustrates an example of this by exploring how “we are invited to mourn not just for crows, but with them” (p. 143). What do you make of van Dooren’s challenge and of the passage below; what role do you think grief and mourning play in the ability to connect with and care for others (both human and more-than-human life)?

“Mourning with crows is about more than any single species, or any number of individual species, but must instead be a process of relearning our place in a shared world: the evolutionary continuities and the ecological connectivities that make our lives possible at all” (p. 143-44).

Monday, September 24, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A
Reading: Lamas, D. (2018). Life on Battery. In You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor’s Stories Of Life Death, And In Between. (pp 65-89). New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.

In the chapter, “Life on Battery,” from her book, You Can Stop Humming Now, critical care physician Daniela Lamas explores her interest in understanding the experience of individuals living with a left-ventricular assist device (VAD).  The chapter specifically explores themes of mortality, the journey of discovering what is important in one’s life, and the dynamics of family structure and support, especially in terms of caregiver roles. 

Monday, October 1, 12-1 p.m., Jefferson Alumni Hall M25
Reading: Meier, Diane E. “‘I Don’t Want Jenny To Think I’m Abandoning Her’: Views On Overtreatment.” Health Affairs 33, no. 5 (May 2014): 895–898.; and Institute of Medicine, Excerpts from Dying in America: Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2015.

Diane Meier’s article introduces a patient, Jenny, whose doctor prescribed treatment for her terminal cancer despite knowing it wouldn’t help her. The article reveals that overtreating patients near the end of life is a common, yet fixable, issue. "Dying in America" uses personal narratives in conjunction with quantitative research to underscore the importance of effective communication between clinicians and patients near the end of life.

Monday, October 8, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A
Reading: Stevenson, Lisa. "Anonymous Care." In Life Beside Itself: Imagining Care in the Canadian Arctic, pages 75-100. Oakland: University of California Press, 2014.

Stevenson draws on her ethnographic research in a Canadian Inuit community to propose that government suicide prevention campaigns send mixed messages to Inuit youth.  

Monday, October 15, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A
Reading: Aviv, R. (2018, February 8). What Does It Mean to Die? The New Yorker.

Aviv discusses current issues regarding the legality behind death, especially with regard to brain death.  To examine these issues, the article studies legal, biomedical, and religious definitions of death and what that means for individuals who are placed on ventilators. In addition, Aviv explores issues of social injustice in regard to how healthcare providers treat patients of varying races and religious backgrounds.

Monday, October 22, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A 
Reading:  Span, Paula. "A Debate Over 'Rational Suicide.'" The New York Times. August 31, 2018.

This week’s reading discusses suicide among the elderly and whether or not it can be considered a rational choice. Using anecdotes, statistics and physician insights, the author presents various sides of this controversial topic. The arguments surrounding rational suicide involve concerns such as mental health and quality of life. Throughout the article, the author underscores the importance of open communication and discussion with regard to suicide among the elderly. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/health/suicide-elderly.html

Monday, November 5, 12-1 p.m., Hamilton Building 212
Reading: BBC Earth Lab. “Could we live forever?” YouTube video, 6:46. Posted [January 2018].

This week's "reading" is a YouTube video by BBC Earth Lab entitled “Could we live forever?” Link to video.

Monday, November 19, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A 
Reading: Rich, Nathaniel. “Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?” The New York Times Magazine, November 28, 2012.

Nathaniel Rich explores an obscure species called Turritopsis dohrnii in the article, “Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?” Also known as the Benjamin Button jellyfish, this species has the ability to age in reverse when it gets old, and then repeat the process when it reaches its earliest stage of development again. While no one knows how it ages in reverse, we do know that there is a high degree of genetic similarity between jellyfish and humans. Many scientists believe that research into immortal jellyfish may have medical implications for humanity, especially in the fields of cancer research and longevity. In fact, there are multiple organisms that are immortal. The question among scientists is which one will teach us the most about human beings. www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/magazine/can-a-jellyfish-unlock-the-secret-of-immortality.html

Monday, November 26, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A 
Reading: Tufekci, Zeynep. "Data-Driven Medicine Will Help People - But Can It Do So Equally?" The New York Times Magazine, November 15, 2018

Zeynep Tufekci describes how the “knowledge gap” that is primarily technology driven will soon be applicable to healthcare. He believes that those who already able to research and implement the data provided by their healthcare professional will benefit from healthcare’s transition to data driven medical techniques.  However, he concludes that those who cannot research and implement the provided data will not benefit from the new technology. Furthermore, the article discusses how this phenomenon will increase health inequality and discrimination without government regulation. The article also explores other potential issues surrounding this transition such as healthcare as a fundamental right, the hiring process, and health insurance. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/15/magazine/tech-design-inequality-health.html 

Monday, December 3, 12-1 p.m., Jefferson Alumni Hall M23 
Reading: "From Gene Editing to A.I., How Will Technology Transform Humanity?" The New York Times Magazine, November 16, 2018.

"From Gene Editing to A.I., How Will Technology Transform Humanity?" is a conversation with five scientists and thinkers, moderated by New York Times Magazine story editor Mark Jannot. The five members of the conversation have worked in various disciplines and industries, ranging from physics, genetics, literature, biology, medicine and more. As a result, each had their own unique insights into the topics at hand. Throughout the conversation they discussed genetic engineering and therapy, and how gene editing will change humanity. In addition, they considered how AI will change medicine and health care for both providers and patients. The conversation ended with a discussion of longevity and age reversal as two possible strategies moving forward. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/16/magazine/tech-design-medicine-phenome.html

Monday, December 10, 12-1 p.m., Scott Memorial Library 200A 
Reading: Black Mirror Netflix series (2011-present): Season 1, Episode 3 - The Entire History of You (49 min) OR Season 3, Episode 1 - Nosedive (63 min) 

Black Mirror Netflix series (2011-present). Pick one episode to watch—or feel free to watch both! This sci-fi anthology series explores a twisted, high-tech near-future where humanity's greatest innovations and darkest instincts collide. -Netflix