Birkbeck Medical Humanities reading group: Medicine and care – cultures of harm, 16 March 2016

Medicine and care: cultures of harm.

The next session of the Birkbeck Medical Humanities reading group, relating to the theme of medicine and care, will be held on Wednesday 16 March, between 3.30-5pm in room 112, 43 Gordon Square<http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/contact-us>.

The reading for this session has been selected by the organisers of the forthcoming conference Cultures of Harm in Institutions of Care: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, which will be held at Birkbeck on 15-16 April 2016.

The readings address undercover reporting to expose institutional abuse. One is by a young woman who got herself admitted to a New York asylum in 1877 to expose the cruelty that was taking place there; another has been written by Joe Plomin who was behind some of the recent Panorama programmes on institutional abuse.

Set texts for the reading group:

  • Nelly Bly, Ten Days in a Madhouse (1877). We suggest readers concentrate on the first seven or eight chapters, and the final one. Each is very short.
  • Joe Plomin, Hidden Cameras. Everything you need to know about covert recording, undercover cameras and secret filming (Jessica Kingsley, 2016), Introduction and Chapter 4
  • As an additional resource, you may also wish to read Jean Marie Lutes, ‘Into the Madhouse with Nellie Bly: Girl Stunt Reporting in Late Nineteenth-Century America’, American Quarterly, 54.2 (2002), 217-53.

Please contact Dr Heather Tilley if you need access to the readings. uble293@mail.bbk.ac.uk

More information on the reading group, including past events, is available on the website http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-research/research_seminars/mhrg

A special workshop relating to this reading will be held in the afternoon of Saturday 16 April as part of the conference, contact Louise Hide, l.hide@bbk.ac.uk, for further information.

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Birkbeck Medical Humanities reading group events in Spring term, 2016

This Spring term, the Birkbeck Medical Humanities reading group will explore the theme of medicine and care.

First session: Wednesday 17 February

Time: 3.30-5:00pm

Where: Room 112, 43 Gordon Square.

We will look at Marion Coutts’s The Iceberg: A Memoir (2015), an account of the death of her husband, Tom Lubbock. Please note that we will not be supplying copies of this book, but rather ask members to borrow or buy the book directly themselves. It is available online to buy for between £7-9, or available on Kindle for around £4.50.
Our next session will be held on Wednesday 16 March, 3.30-5pm, also in room 112, 43 Gordon Square. I will circulate details of reading nearer the time.

More information on the reading group, including past events, is available on our website.

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