Events

E.g., 10/21/2020
E.g., 10/21/2020

  • Narrative Medicine & The Creative Impulse: A Virtual Basic Workshop and Online Course

    Friday, October 23, 2020 to Sunday, October 25, 2020
    5:00 PM
    Online Event
    • Basic Health Sciences
    • Clinical Health Sciences
    • College of Dental Medicine
    • College of Physicians and Surgeons
    • Columbia Nursing
    • Communications and Media
    • Education
    • Government and Public Policy
    • Global Programs
    • Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
    • Healthcare
    • Humanities
    • International and Public Affairs
    • Journalism
    • Law
    • Mailman School of Public Health
    • Music
    • Other
    • Religion
    • Political Science
    • Research
    • School of Social Work
    • Social Justice
    • Teaching and Learning
    • Social Sciences
    • Natural Sciences
    • Careers
    • Arts
    Narrative Medicine & The Creative Impulse is going virtual!
    With a one-time 25% percent discount on our usual tuition rates, and Early Bird Registration of $50 off the discounted tuition through October 9th!

    **Visit the information & registration link above for more information.**

    In light of the ongoing and necessary precautions surrounding travel and public gatherings, we will be transforming this workshop and introductory Narrative Medicine course into a virtual experience! While we hope to be able to be together in person again for future workshops, we are excited by the possibilities of bringing this learning experience to you in a new and even more broadly accessible format. Over the last few weeks the narrative medicine faculty and program directors have worked to preserve all of the original content, including lectures, small group work, literature, educational and networking resources, continuing education credits, and direct interaction with narrative medicine faculty and our guest speakers. Our new format combines live virtual sessions and asynchronous learning modalities to deliver an introduction to the field that provides the same learning, connection, and transformative experience over the course of our October weekend as our traditional workshops, while taking into consideration the fatigue and burnout of demanding virtual schedules.

    We are also offering a one-time 25% percent discount on our usual tuition rates, with the understanding that time and resources have increased demands during these difficult few months, as well as an early bird special of $50 off the discounted tuition for those who sign up before October 9th.

    Our updated registration rates are listed on our website at the link above, as well as a new outline for our virtual weekend schedule and preparatory asynchronous materials.

    We look forward to sharing the practice and creative inspiration of Narrative Medicine with you in these new and creative ways, illustrating just how impactful narrative medicine can be even from “afar.”

    Narrative Medicine is, at its core, a creative act. Acts of perception and attention ignite our narrative practice. Seeing, hearing, sensing, taking in that which we witness begins the process toward healing, and creative thinking fostered by narrative medicine training attunes us to those skills within ourselves. Creative Director of Narrative Medicine novelist Nellie Hermann has been our leader and inspiration in locating creativity at the heart of what we do.

    The creativity of narrative medicine goes far beyond a reliance on fiction and film as convenient “case histories” of patients, or paintings as observable depictions of diseased bodies, or musical compositions as evidence of a composer’s psychopathology. Instead, narrative medicine recognizes the aesthetic capabilities of its practitioners as fundamental instruments necessary for effective care. We grow toward our own powers to attend to our patients through the schooled avenues of close reading, deep listening, and concentrated witnessing of works of art.

    This workshop features world-renowned writers, artists, cinema scholars, and musicians who can reveal to us how to get the news from stories, images, and sounds. Join us in engaging interactions with works of art in varied forms and genres. Join us too in the creation of art—not only for the pleasure this brings, but for the community-building that cannot but follow from it. Narrative medicine is a radical practice with art and beauty at its center, not to distract us from the suffering we face, but to make the suffering visible, audible, and palpable so as to ease it.

  • “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval,” a talk by author and professor Saidiya Hartman

    Wednesday, November 4, 2020
    5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
    Online Event
    • Humanities
    • Mailman School of Public Health
    • Political Science
    • Social Justice
    • Arts
    For our November Narrative Medicine Rounds, we are honored to welcome Saidiya Hartman, the author of "Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments," "Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route," and "Scenes of Subjection." Professor Hartman will give a talk on her newest book and continue the discussion with Farah Jasmine Griffin, Professor of English and Comparative Literature and chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies Department and Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University.

    A MacArthur Fellow, Saidiya Hartman has been a Guggenheim Fellow, Cullman Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar. She has just been appointed to the rank of University Professor, Columbia’s highest academic honor. Professor Hartman received a BA (1984) from Wesleyan University and a PhD (1992) from Yale University.

    Prior to joining the faculty of Columbia University, where she is a professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Saidiya Hartman was a professor in the Department of English and African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (1992–2006). She is the former director of the Institute for Research on Gender and Sexuality at Columbia University and was a Whitney Oates Fellow at Princeton University (2002), a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library (2016–2017), and a Critical Inquiry Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago (2018). In addition to her books, she has published articles in journals such as South Atlantic Quarterly, Brick, Small Axe, Callaloo, The New Yorker and The Paris Review.

  • “Police Violence as Public Health Threat: Exploring the Alternatives,” a talk by author and professor Alex S. Vitale

    Wednesday, December 2, 2020
    5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
    Online Event
    • Healthcare
    • Social Justice
    For our December Narrative Medicine Rounds, we welcome Alex S. Vitale, who is a Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College and a Visiting Professor at London Southbank University. He has spent the last 30 years writing about policing and consults both police departments and human rights organizations internationally. Professor Vitale will give a talk on “Police Violence as Public Health Threat: Exploring the Alternatives.”

    Professor Vitale is the author of "City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics" and "The End of Policing." His academic writings on policing have appeared in Policing and Society, Police Practice and Research, Mobilization, and Contemporary Sociology. He is also a frequent essayist, whose writings have been published in The NY Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Vice News, Fortune, and USA Today. He has also appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, PBS, Democracy Now, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

    Narrative Medicine Rounds are monthly rounds on the first Wednesday of the month during the academic year hosted by the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. A recording of our Virtual Narrative Medicine rounds will be made available following the live session on the Narrative Medicine YouTube channel. You can also listen to a podcast of past Rounds on iTunes or watch recent ones on YouTube.