Call for papers: 'Attentive Writers': Healthcare, Authorship, and Authority
Call for Papers: ‘Attentive Writers’: Healthcare,
Authorship, and Authority
Medical Humanities Research Centre, University of
Glasgow, United Kingdom
23-25 August 2013
Conference Committee: Dr. David Shuttleton, Dr. Gavin
Miller, Dr.
Elizabeth Reeder, and Dr. Megan Coyer
From nurses, physicians and surgeons to administrators,
caregivers, technicians, veterinarians and voluntary sector workers, this
conference adopts the term ‘attentive writers’ as evocative of the multitude of
both non-professional and professional caregivers – clinical and non-clinical
healthcare workers – whose attention to illness might take narrative form.
The study of physician-writers was one of the earliest
developments in the related fields of Literature and Medicine and the Medical
Humanities, with canonical figures such as Conan Doyle, Goldsmith, Keats,
Smollett, and William Carlos Williams, receiving much-deserved critical
attention.
Echoing Rita Charon’s concept of ’attentiveness’, this
conference brings this established field of enquiry regarding ‘the physician as
writer’ into dialogue with recent calls for a more inclusive approach to the
Medical Humanities (i.e. ‘Health Humanities’) and questions the authoritative
place of the Western – traditionally male – physician in our explorations of
the humanities/health interface.
The relationship between healthcare, authorship and
authority will be addressed through three inter-related strands of thematic enquiry: (1) an historical and
literary examination of ‘attentive writers’; (2) a more devolved interrogation
of the field of Narrative Medicine; and (3) an examination of ‘attentive
writing’ as creative practice.
Papers might address, but are not limited to, the
following topics:
Nurse-writers, physician-writers, surgeon-writers,
veterinarian-writers, etc. of any culture, historical period or literary epoch,
and/or nurses, physicians, surgeons, and vets as literary subjects
Non-clinical healthcare workers (adminstrators, janitors,
technicians,
etc.) as writers and/or literary subjects
The literature of caregiving
Gender and medical authority
Historical development of medical and literary
professionalism
The afterlife of Foucault’s ‘medical gaze’
Hybrid discourses and genres (the case history, illness
narratives, etc.)
Narrative Medicine (and, particularly, does it challenge
or reinforce the notion of physician as sole author/authority) and related
developments in professionalism and education
The philosophy of attentiveness in healthcare and
creative writing
‘Attentive writing’ as creative practice; including
‘process oriented’
writing practices and those primarily concerned with the
creation of aesthetically valuable outcomes.
For Creative Writers: We’re particularly looking for
papers and readings from creative writers in all genres whose writing is rooted
in questions about, experiences of or research into issues of illness,
caregiving, and medicine. We are also
interested in how creativity may be impacted by any of these. We're particularly interested in discussing
how our subjects, genres, research and craft exist in tension and help to
produce expansive and important contributions to literature. For the most part, these contributions should
move beyond writing as reflection, to literary writing that complicates and
communicates knowledge and experiences of issues currently falling within the
frame of medical/health humanities.
Abstracts of up to 500 words should be submitted, along
with a short biography (no more than 250 words), to arts-attentivewriters@glasgow.ac.uk
by 4 March 2013 (note the extended date).
Any queries may also be directed to: megan.coyer@glasgow.ac.uk