Date: 9.00 am-5.30 pm, Friday 17th August 2018
Location: Lancaster University
Representing Pain: Narrative and Fragments, a Symposium at Lancaster University
The Symposium is part of the AHRC-funded research network Translating Chronic
Pain, which is exploring the challenges pain experience poses to traditional narrative
representation, and the value of rethinking narrativity or embracing unconventional
or fragmentary narrative forms. The symposium will explore broad debates around
narrativity in medical humanities, the potential of short-form narration or
unconventional forms of illness narration, the positivity imperative in illness
narration, challenges of chronic pain representation, and the way ‘entanglements’
with fields such as disability studies or trauma theory may enrich critical medical
humanities approaches to these questions.
Speakers include Dr Angela Woods (Durham), Dr Stella Bolaki (Kent), Dr James Berger
(Yale), Dr. Megan Crowley-Matoka (Northwestern), Professor Ann Jurecic (Rutgers),
Professor Brendan Stone (Sheffield), and Professor Javier Moscoco (Professor of
History and Philosophy of Science, Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, Spain).
This Translating Chronic Pain network brings together people living with pain,
academics, and pain charities to explore how short-form creative writing may support
people living with pain, raise awareness, and enhance healthcare training.
Travel and accommodation bursaries are also available for six postgraduate students or early career researchers.
For more information please visit the project website at http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/translating-pain
To register to attend or for more information please email S.Wasson@lancaster.ac.uk.
In addition, this project has an ongoing call for creative work: ‘Flash’ illness writing. The Symposium is part of the AHRC-funded research network Translating Chronic Pain, which is especially exercised by the way that conventional illness narrations (long form autobiography/memoir) don’t always lend themselves well to chronic pain experience. As a result, the network is also exploring ‘flash’ illness writing, and we have produced a web-based public anthology of creative work in this vein at the project website. The call for creative work remains open, and the organiser invites 5-150 words of prose or poetry, optionally alongside artwork or comic/sequential art. For details on this flash illness writing initiative please visit http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/translatingpain/creative-manifesto/.