Call for Paper
Medicine in Literature
40th Anniversary Convention, Northeast Modern Languages Association (NeMLA)
February 26 - March 1, 2009
Hyatt Regency - Boston Massachusetts
Deadline for submission: September 15, 2008
This panel will study the ways in which medicine is present and perceived through its various representations in French Literature of different periods. Medicine is an area of enduring inquiry and indeed as a science, one of the greatest human achievements. Its role and importance have not been a constant throughout history. The medical advances, their impact and reception have greatly differed from period to period. This panel will therefore study medicine through the lenses of Literature, focusing on diverse periods and axes of examination. We hope these reflections will help us better appreciate the ways in which human kind relates itself to the knowledge about its own physical being – How we have developped, authorized and dealt with the concept of being studied and treated as a scientific object? What are the objectives and limits we have established, cope with and overcome, from the Middle Ages to present? How do we negotiate in defining medicine, as a patient, a doctor, and a spectator?
Topics of discussion will include, but are not limited to:
- Medicine as a literary topos: a historical record, an accidental event, a poetic moment, etc.
- Medicine and the patient: narratives on pain, death, and relief.
- Medicine and the actor/doctor: discourse on knowledge, diagnosis, cure, and ethics.
- Medicine and the spectator: affective or disinterested obsevations.
- Medicine and nature
- Medicine and the supernatural
Abstracts should be addressed to Lison Baselis-Bitoun (lbaselis@fas.harvard.edu) and Philippa Kim (jhkim@post.harvard.edu).