Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium Meeting 2010: Call for Proposals
Rhonda L. Soricelli
The PENNSYLVANIA MEDICAL HUMANITIES CONSORTIUM (PAMHC) is a diverse group of health practitioners, humanists, scholars, scientists, writers and students who gather annually to discuss research and teaching in the medical humanities. The Consortium strives to be a different venue from the usual academic meeting, focusing on collegial discussion and the sharing of ideas.
We are pleased to announce that the Eighth Annual Meeting will take place at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia on Thursday, May 20, 2010 and will be preceded on the evening of Wednesday, May 19, 2010 by a presentation on Mark Twain and Medicine by endocrinologist and medical historian K. Patrick Ober, MD, author of Mark Twain and Medicine: Any Mummery Will Cure (2003).
Please review our CALL FOR PROPOSALS below. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2010. Registration will open in January.
WE ENCOURAGE STUDENTS TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS MEETING. REGISTRATION FEES WILL BE WAIVED FOR ALL STUDENT PRESENTERS AND FOR THE FIRST TWENTY STUDENT REGISTRANTS.
Through the Lens of Time:
Perspectives on Medicine and Health Care
“The past is the key to understanding the present.” ―John Dewey
The Eighth Annual Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium meeting will be held at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 19 South 22nd Street, (between Chestnut & Market Streets; an easy walk from 30th Street Station) on Wednesday evening May 19 through Thursday afternoon, May 20, 2010.
To explore this year’s theme, Through the Lens of Time: Perspectives on Medicine and Health Care, we are seeking abstracts of papers as well as proposals for panels, workshops, readings or performances that meet the following criteria:
● They examine a topic relevant to medicine and health care from a historical perspective.
● The approach represents the orientation of at least one of the medical humanities (including history, literature and the arts, bioethics,
philosophy, religious studies, and social sciences such as cultural studies, disabilities studies, medical sociology, psychology, and anthropology).
● They are of general interest to a diverse group.
● They promise to serve as a departure point for lively group discussion.
All presenters must be registered conference participants. We particularly welcome submissions from students at all levels and from all relevant disciplines. (Through support from the Wood Institute for the History of Medicine, registration fees will be waived for all student presenters and for the first twenty student registrants.) Please keep in mind that the Consortium strives to be a different venue from the usual academic meeting. Rather than having a series of presentations with minimal time for Q & A, the consortium focuses on collegial discussion and the sharing of ideas. Paper presentations should be brief (no more than 10 – 15 minutes). They should be catalysts for discussion rather than ends in themselves. Panels, workshops, readings and performances will be allowed 60 – 90 minutes, to be divided as the planning committee deems equitable, based on their content and the number of participants.
Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:
● The impact of the Flexner Report (1910) on healthcare education, then and now
● The symbols of medicine
● Changing representations of health and illness in literature, art, photography, film, music, dance or mass media
● Historical and contemporary perceptions/constructs of the body
● Images of health practitioners and/or health care institutions through the ages
● Evolving relationships between members of the health care team
● Shifting paradigms in the provision of primary care
● Returning care from the hospital to the home
● “Disability” and disabilities studies in historical context
● Gender issues in medicine and health care
● Historicizing the constructs/contexts of maternity, paternity and/or “family”
● Evolving perceptions of ageing and “the good death”
● Contemporizing historical medical collections
● The “new” economics of health care
We welcome interdisciplinary work as well as that of single disciplines. Please send abstracts (250 words) and proposals (one page) electronically as an attachment in Word (not in the body of an email) by January 31, 2010 to David H. Flood, PhD (David...@Drexel.edu).
Additional information including registration form, plans for the event on Wednesday evening, and suggestions for accommodations will be forthcoming. For general inquiries about submissions or the meeting itself, or to send name and email address of folk who should be on our mailing list, please contact
Chair, Planning Committee