Join us on Wednesday 18th June (5pm – 7.15pm) in Arts 103 (on the first floor of the Arts Building). for the interdisciplinary Disease and Narrative ‘Distorted Storytelling’ workshop. The event is hosted by the Media and Epidemics project and the Nineteenth-Century Centre (19CC) and we’re really looking forward to having a range of speakers from across University departments.
From the nineteenth-century onwards, sensational tales of disease were galvanised by an exploding literary marketplace. Diverse print avenues made accessible to the masses meant that stories of disease could be routinely produced, consumed, (and even distorted), creating a culture of quackery which threatened to blur medical fact with fiction. This interdisciplinary workshop will host University of Birmingham speakers from Psychology, Geography, Creative Writing, and Literature to consider questions of authenticity and authority, physical and psychological conceptions of disease, digital ‘bugs’, and narratives of contagion.
Our talks include the following:
‘Karl Jasper and the First Biological Psychiatry’ – Professor Matthew Broome (Psychology)
‘Empathy, Storytelling, and Mad Cows’ – Dr Ruth Gilligan (Creative Writing)
‘Contagious Computing and the Millennium Bug’ – Dr Dorothy Butchard (English)
‘Expert Narratives of Digital Emotional Governance’ – Professor Jessica Pykett (Geography)
Students, staff, and colleagues from across disciplines are warmly encouraged to attend and embrace the opportunity for wide-ranging interdisciplinary discussion. Refreshments will be served and registration is required via the Eventbrite page here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/disease-and-narrative-tickets-1320082605609?aff=oddtdtcreator
