Precariously situated between home and hospital, work and bed, life and death, the patient occupies a liminal, unstable position. Charged to identify with her state as with the moral virtue from which she receives her name, the patient also lives in the fear of our indifference or impatience. Although attended by doctors, nurses, family, and friends her condition – particularly if it is chronic – ever threatens to sever her connections with the world and to exile her into that fundamental solitude owned by the sick and suffering.
      Immersed within a society and medical system that seeks optimum outcomes linked to zero errors, the patient receives care delivered with industrial efficiency. Advances in diagnostic and therapeutic modalities provide both cure and control of chronic illnesses not imagined a decade ago. Poised to benefit on multiple fronts, she should be increasingly satisfied with the medical encounter; and yet, many patients feel alienated or even violated by the efficiency of the medical system. What defines a medical encounter from her perspective? What do medical practitioners – nurses, physicians, social workers – value in their relationship with the patient? How is this relationship preserved and nurtured? What are the opportunities or perils in the physician-patient relationship?
      It seems timely to counteract the quantification of the patient by the health care industry and to call for a humanistic reconstitution of the patient’s experience and situation, to reconsider, rethink, and emphatically re-imagine the patient in her environments, ancient and contemporary, intimate and social.       

Schedule of Events:

Friday, October 20

* Unless otherwise noted, A sessions will be in Arches Lounge, B Sessions in Walls Lounge

9 a.m. Welcome Michael Foltzer and Harold Schweizer (Arches Lounge)

Session 1, 9:15-10:45: The Patient in Context

Chair: Michael Foltzer (Geisinger Medical Center)

T. Ramsey Thorp (Board of Trustees, Chestnut Hill Healthcare), "The Laying on of Hands"

Amy McCready (Department of Political Science, Bucknell University), "Critical Cases: The Malleability of Health and Justice"

Rhonda Soricelli (Section on Medicine and the Arts, The College of Physicians,of Philadelphia) and David Flood (Health and Society, Drexel University), "From the Patient's Perspective: Literary Insights on Family Caregiving"

10:30 - 11 a.m. Coffee in Arches Lounge

Session 2 A, 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.: The Patient Across Disciplines: Approaches to Illness and Dying

Chair: Kimi Grant (Bucknell University)

Agnés Conacher (Department of French Studies, Queen's University), "The Temptation to Abuse Fénelon's Maximes des Saints as a Spiritual Exercise"

Anglea Cozea (Department of French Studies, University of Toronto) and Colin MacPherson (Resident in Psychiatry, University of Toronto), "Dialogue on Mental Illness"

Catherine Dhavernas (Department of French Studies, Queen's University), "The Legacy of Illness and Death in the Works of Pedro Almodovar and Marguerite Yourcenar"

Session 2 B, 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.: Caring for the Patient

Chair: Kang Tchou (Bucknell University)

Elizabeth Mackenzie (History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania), "Storytelling and Humanism: Training Providers in Relationship-Centered Care"

Patrick Muller (Artist and Independent Scholar), "Exotic Texts for Mundane Tasks: Elements of Teaching a Patient-Centered Interview Protocol in Novice Clincians"

Heather Murray (Department of English, Pennsylvania State University), "Short Stories: Cyberpathographies and Turner Syndrome"

12:30 - 2 p.m.: Lunch Break

Session 3 A, 2 - 3:30 p.m.: Self-Portraits of Patients

Chair: Christine Felser (Bucknell University)

Kristin Lindgren (Writing Program, Haverford College), "Scheherazade Syndrome: Illness and Storytelling"

Carol Schilling (Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania), "Feathers Rose from the Floor as I Walked through the Door of the ER"

Ann Starr (Art Institute of Chicago), "The Very Picture of Health: Self-Portraits during Mental Illness"

Session 3 B, 2-3:30 p.m.: The Politics of the Patient

Chair: Christine Dougherty (Bucknell University)

Susanne Berthier (Department of Applied English, Université de Grenoble), "A Patient/Hospital Relationship in 1863-65: Mainstream Doctors and Navajo Patients in the Bosque Redondo Camp"

Julia Carlson (Department of English, National University of Ireland), "Just Care: Narrative and Nursing in J.M. Coetzee's Slow Man"

Naoko Wake (History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science, Michigan State University), "Making Therapuetic Culture in Homophobic Medicine: Harry S. Sullivan and His Patients, 1920's-30's"

Session 4, 4-5:30 p.m.: The Patient and the Construction of Identity (Arches Lounge)

Chair: Rebecca Morris (Bucknell University)

Jocelyn Emerson (University Professors Program, Boston University), "Ground Even to Attenuation: John Donne and the Poetics of Medical Autobiography"

John Rickard (Department of English, Bucknell University), "The Irish Patient: Body, Nation, and Language in the Poetry of Eavan Boland and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill"

Arts Presentation: Leeny Sack (Performance Artist and Certified Master Teacher in Kinetic Awareness), "Patient/Artist" (Gallery Theatre)

5:45 p.m. Wine and Cheese Reception, Samek Art Gallery

6:30 p.m.: Keynote (Introduction by: Harold Schweizer, Bucknell University)

Tess Gallagher (Poet, Fiction Writer, Essayist): "Beyond Forgetting: Poetry about Alzheimer's" (The Forum)

Saturday, October 21

Session 5 A, 9-10:30 a.m.: The Female Patient in Literature

Chair: Molly Clay (Bucknell University)

Angela Laflen (Department of English, Purdue University), "Seeing Patients: The Gender Politics of Medical Imaging in 'Third Monday' and 'Bluebeard's Egg'"

Tameka Cage (Department of English, Bucknell University), "Healing the Wound: The Body, Voyeurism, and the Art of Recovery in Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy"

Marcelline Block (Department of French and Italian, Princeton University), "The Tableau of the Sick Woman in Bed: Representing the Female Patient in Poe's 'Ligeia' and Blanchot's 'L'Arrêt de Mort'"

Session 5 B, 9-10:30 a.m.: The Experience of the Suffering Patient

Chair: Edward Kelleher (Bucknell University)

Ellen Foster (Department of English, Clarion University), "A Rigorous Mind Meets Her Yielding Body: Wit's Exploration of Intellectual Experiences of Illness and Dying"

Catalina Florescu (Comparative Studies, Purdue University), "Ne Habeas Corpus in Brian Clark's Whose Life is it Anyway? and Alejandro Amenabar's The Sea Inside"

Tara McGann (Department of Literature, American University), "Intimations of Mortality: Eliot's Janet's Repentance and the Remission Society"

10:30-11 a.m. Coffee in Arches Lounge

Session 6 A, 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.: The Performance of Patienthood

Chair: Caleb Sheaffer (Bucknell University)

Nels Highberg (Department of Rhetoric, Language, Culture, University of Hartford), "How James Frey Broke My Heart into a Million Little Pieces"

Lisa Diedrich (Women's Studies, SUNY Stony Brook), "Lying and the Performance of Patienthood"

T. Ravichandran (Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur), "Games Doctors Play: Remedy as Cybernetic Strategy in Postmodern Fictions"

Session 6 B, 11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m., The Mental Patient and Alzheimer's Disease

Chair: Nick Kupensky (Bucknell University)

Julie Aultman (Bioethics, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine), "Literary and Visual Imagery and Reflection: A Holistic Approach for Understanding the Patient with Mental Illness"

Jess Ballenger (Science, Technology, and Society, Pennsylvania State University), "The Embodiment of Deconstruction: Selfhood in the Narratives of Alzheimer's Disease Victims"

Ron Carson (Institute for the Medical Humanities, University of Texas Medical Branch), "When Are They Going to Let Me Out: Moral Reflections on Living with Alzheimer's Disease"

12:30-2 p.m.: Lunch Break

Session 7 A, 2-3:30 p.m.: The Identity of the Patient

Chair: Elaine Wood (Bucknell University)

Ann Juercic (Department of English, Rutgers University), "The Patient in Pain and the Literary Imagination"

Gayle Whittier (Department of English, SUNY Binghamton), "The U-Word: Parents (Re) Writing Children's Disability"

Session 7 B, 2 - 3:30 p.m.

Chair: Brian Fortune (Bucknell University)

Michael Payne (Department of English, Bucknell University), "The Child as a Hysterical Patient: Burnett's The Secret Garden"

Julia Feldhaus (Department of Germanic, Russian, and East European Literatures, Rutgers University), "The Twin Role of a Physician: A Healer of People and a Scientist; Physician-Patient Relationships in Ingeborg Bachmann's Der Fall Franza"

Annick Cossic (Literature and Civilization of the English-Speaking World, University of Western Brittany), "The Enlightenment Patient's Encounter with his Physician: From a Real Life Experience to Literary Art; The Cases of Pope, Richardson and Smollet"

3:45 p.m. Wine and Cheese Reception, Samek Art Gallery

4:15 p.m. Arts Presentation: Todd Savitt (Department of Medical Humanities, Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University), Medical Reader's Theater Performance (Gallery Theatre)

5:15 p.m.: Keynote (Introduction by: Michael Foltzer, Geisinger Medical Center)

Rita Charon (Director of the Narrative Medicine Program, College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University), "The Patient, the Body, and the Self" (The Forum)

7:15 p.m.: Buffet Dinner at Marco's Tapas