Oregon Humanities Center Research Interest Group Proposal

Name: Health Humanities, the Body, and Society

Faculty Coordinator/department: Dr. Mary Wood, English

Description of intellectual focus and purpose: 

This reading group focuses on the intersection of health and the humanities. By viewing medical practices and language through a humanistic lens, we look to new avenues of understanding and examining our relationship to scientific practices and knowledge. Our focus is broadly oriented to the field of health humanities, and specifically concerned with thinking about the intersection of objective science and subjective life: the body. The life sciences and the humanities negotiate with and interpret one another over what a body is, what a human, gendered, suffering, conscious, rational body and mind are, and what it means for something to be healthy.

Our group aims to focus on creating a space for an interdisciplinary approach to a constellation of issues connected by the concept of health. Our research is oriented towards practices of interpretation that make visible or legible terms and objects that are often taken for granted, especially in medical practice. Given the import that universal health care has in current political debates, the incredible amounts of money that circulate in the pharmaceutical industry, and the focus on biomedical data science in the recently established Knight Campus at the University of Oregon, we consider it of key relevance and importance to have interdisciplinary conversations and research on the history, origin, and meaning of concepts of health and the body.

List of members, ranks, and affiliations:

First Name	Last Name	Affiliation	Rank
Kristin	Yarris	International Studies	Faculty
Mary	Wood	English	Faculty
Nicolae	Morar	Philosophy	Faculty
Molly	Hatay-Ferens	English	Graduate
Megan	Reynolds	English	Graduate
Devin	Fitzpatrick	Philosophy	Graduate
Cassie	Galentine	English	Graduate
Ricardo	Friaz	Philosophy	Graduate
Emily	Sutton	Biology	Graduate
Sarah	McLay	Philosophy	Graduate

Description of plans for the academic year:

Our focus for this year will be on meeting regularly to read foundational texts in the semiotics of the body and pain. The first text we shall read and discuss together is The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry. Ideally, we will also discuss one of her later works: Resisting Representation. As the group progresses, we may opt to discuss and present our own selections of research in Spring 2020.

Estimated budget:

Eight copies of Body in Pain: 8 * ~$15 = $120*

Eight copies of Resisting Representation: 8 * ~$43 = $344*

*Prices are from Amazon.com’s price listing for these texts