Innovations in Public Engagement and Humanities Advocacy
Presented as part of the Consortium of Humanities Centers & Institutes 2022 Conference
Public Events
Fresh Off the Press: Furnace Creek: A Novel
Taking its inspiration from Great Expectations, Furnace Creek teases us with the question of what Pip might have been like had he grown up in the American South of the 1960s and 1970s and faced the explosive social issues—racial injustice, a war abroad, women’s and gay rights, class struggle—that galvanized the world in those decades. Deftly combining elements of coming-of-age story, novel of erotic discovery, Southern Gothic fiction, and detection-mystery thriller, Furnace Creek offers a contemporary meditation on the perils of desire, ambition, love, loss, and family.
Fresh Off the Press: Freedomville: The Story of a 21st Century Slave Revolt
Freedomville is the story of a small group of enslaved villagers in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, who founded their own town of Azad Nagar—Freedomville—after staging a rebellion against their slaveholders. But Laura T. Murphy (NHC Fellow, 2017–18), a leading scholar of contemporary global slavery, who spent years researching and teaching about Freedomville, found that whispers and deflections suggested that there was something troubling about Azad Nagar’s success.
Building a Speculative Archive
Scholars and representatives from state humanities councils reflect on the topics covered during the Crisis of Caring conference and showcase objects, musings, and creative work submitted in advance to our speculative archive by conference participants, attendees, and interested members of the public. This archive collectively imagines a range of possible futures and directions for the health humanities and for medical practice itself.
Genres of Empathy
What role do the arts play in the practice of “the healing arts”? This session, featuring creators and theorists in photography, film, poetry, creative writing, and graphic medicine, explores how innovative creative and arts-based methods are changing both medical practice and medical education.
Caring and Understanding in a Global Health Context
How do we approach health crises as they affect people from widely disparate cultures? How do we account for the challenges presented by differences in technology and infrastructure? Panelists will explore how national, international, colonial, technological, and economic forces have shaped the ways in which we conceptualize and respond to global health issues.
Medical Research and Global Health Equity: A Conversation with Industry Leaders
How can research organizations, corporations, and not-for-profit funding entities ensure that intellectual, monetary, and therapeutic health resources are distributed equitably on a global scale? Our featured speakers address the current challenges facing internationally focused work across sectors and industries related to healthcare solutions.
Eula Biss, “The Pain Scale”
In her brief, compelling narrative piece, “The Pain Scale,” writer Eula Biss, MFA, contemplates the inexpressible nature of pain and the difficulty of seeking relief through a medical system that relies heavily upon quantitative assessments of pain. In this group discussion, we use Biss’s piece as a starting point for reflecting on the intensely personal experience of suffering and the complexities of translating such experiences in ways that are diagnosable and treatable.
Access and Inclusivity in American Medicine
How do we address the inequities in access to healthcare and improve outcomes for historically underserved and oppressed groups? Panelists consider vital issues of access, equity, and inclusivity in the American medical system, and discuss how humanistic modes of critical reflection and analysis can help guide urgently needed interventions.
A Time of Crisis | A Crisis of Time
How do the stories that emerge from crisis help us confront them? And in what ways do they help us prepare for those yet to come? One of the pioneers in the field of narrative medicine, Rita Charon, discusses these and other questions in conversation with literary scholar Jane F. Thrailkill. Welcome and introduction by Robert D. Newman, PhD, President and Director, National Humanities Center.