| 7:30 AM — 8:30 AM MERF Atrium |
Coffee |
| 8:30 AM — 9:45 AM session 4 CBRB 1289 |
Narrative Palliative Care: Storytelling for Healing [Panel discussion] Dana Gage Dana Gage has been a physician for 30 years and a writer since she was ten. Her career includes ER medicine, primary care and a variety of other venues. She has a special interest in the intersection between story-telling and care giving. She joined the Narrative Medicine Program in its inaugural years and uses her principles in her work and sharing the use of narrative with the world. Her play, Tandem Journey, was performed in early October in NYC at the Performing the World Conference. Her writing has appeared in Reflexions, Intima, and the Daily Palette. She won second prize in the ALS Ontario writing contest for her essay "A Lawyer's Scribe.", MD, Columbia University, MS Candidate; Lynn Sara Lawrence Lynn Lawrence is a psychotherapist practicing in New York City. She has had years of experience both in hospital based social work with cancer and heart patients, as well as out-patient adult psychotherapy. She is the author of numerous psychoanalytic articles, books and movie reviews. A poet, she has read her work at the 92nd Street Y. Currently she is completing her degree in the Master's Program of Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. She hopes to merge both worlds., LCSW, Columbia University MS candidate; Holly Kuczynski Holly Kuczynski is a master's candidate in Columbia University's Program in Narrative Medicine and recently submitted a Master's thesis titled "The Sharing Stories Project: Designing and Implementing a Narrative Medicine Workshop Model for the Residents of a Long-Term Care Facility." She earned her BA in Interdisciplinary Science from Eugene Lang College, the New School for Liberal Arts. She plans to pursue a career as a narrative medicine educator, advocate and writer., BA, Columbia University Master's candidate NM; Memory serves as the scaffold of life. It both enslaves and emboldens us. Its absence renders us helpless. Its presence can be both blessing and curse. Much of it can be lost to aging, pre-occupation, depression or illness. Memory might well be considered the backbone of Narrative Medicine. We three, a physician, a psychotherapist and health care advocate will present a comprehensive and illustrative employment of narrative techniques in three unique settings of palliative care. We brought our work to a nursing home, a cancer center, and to the home of a man living with ALS. However dissimilar these situations may appear, each had as goal accessing memories, often those that had not been revisited in many years or that had previously not been accessed with a particular situation in mind, or as an aide in identifying and crystallizing a current identity. All work was done with the use of clear and close reading or listening with a discussion point and prompts. This work was also approached through the mediums of speech, photography, tactile representation and memoir building. Memory served as a repetitive and constant theme, whether it was consciously constructed by creating written memoir, through the use of prompts to elicit subconscious or elusive feelings, or by asking those with cognitive deficits to reconstruct memories by the use of simple phrases. This unlocking of previously untapped associations was accompanied by a positive affective shift. This will be illustrated by both example and instruction.Objectives: Participants will better understand how narrative medicine techniques can be used to facilitate palliative care in a variety of settings using a variety of techniques. They will also be able to assess when techniques need to be modified for better results and appreciate a variety of those techniques and their outcomes. |
| 8:30 AM — 9:45 AM session 4 MERF 1117 |
As I Remember: Telling the Tales of our Trials [Discussion forum] Elaina Meier Elaina Meier is a trained peer support counselor for Burn Unit at Columbia St. Mary's and a moderator for the Phoenix Society for Burn Survivor's national online peer support group. Meier is a high school social studies and journalism teacher in the metro Milwaukee area. Meier has an MA in English with a writing concentration and is finishing coursework in Clinical Mental Health studies in pursuit of an LPC. She is active in advocacy work for a number of at-risk populations and has pursued the use of writing for healing and writing for advocacy for those recovering from trauma., MA, Columbia St. Mary's Regional Burn Unit SOAR Program; We all have that one memory that sticks with us in the after math of a medical experience. Whether we are clinicians or clients, those snapshot memories go with us. The challenge becomes what we do with them. For some, telling the tale of that moment's memory is an important step on the road to healing. This workshop will provide participants with an opportunity to explore and experience the use of writing as a tool for finding and making meaning in those profound memories we all have. Designed as an interactive workshop, participants will explore the creative use of pen and voice to express significant memories of the medical recovery process after a significant illness or injury with an emphasis on the healing power of story. While acknowledging the inherent struggles of illness and/or injury and the subsequent recovery process, participants will be encouraged to focus on themes of compassion, hope, and resilience. During the workshop participants will use the pen to step back and look at stories from a different perspective, and writing the story rather than having it write them. Participants will be encouraged to explore the writing medium that best gives voice to the story pressing to be told; for example, participants may consider fiction, poetry, memoir, or journalistic style.Objectives: Participants will Participants will be able to describe the process of writing for healing; experience the creative writing process through the creation of original work; and employ the narrative power of words to make meaning of the memories that stay with us in the after math of significant medical experiences. |
| 8:30 AM — 9:45 AM session 4 MERF 2189 |
From Dried Prunes to Juicy Plums - How Stories Know the Way [Panel discussion] Hilton Koppe Hilton Koppe is a Family Practitioner in Lennox Head, Northern NSW, Australia and Senior Medical Educator for North Coast GP Training, which trains over 100 general practice trainees each year. Hilton graduated from University of NSW in 1982. The highlight of his medical career was spending a year as the Original Australian Traveling Barefoot Doctor, which involved a year’s camping trip around Australia with his wife Sharon. During that time, Hilton travelled for 48 weeks, and did 4 weeks work, which represents what he believes to be a pretty good balance between work and play. Hilton has been involved in medical education since 1990. In recent years, he has been involved in developing programs exploring the interface between the arts and medicine, with particular emphasis on using creative writing as a tool for burnout prevention. Hilton is regularly invited to present his innovative workshops around the world. Outside work, Hilton is a keen cook, gardener and proud member of Lennox Head over 35s premiership winning soccer team, Master of Family Medicine, North Coast GP Training; Susan Perrow Susan Perrow (M.Ed) has 30 years experience (nationally and internationally) in teaching, teacher training, storytelling and parent education; and 12 years experience (nationally and internationally) running workshops for health professionals including psychologists, therapists, school counselors, doctors and social workers. In 2000 she developed the first Storytelling Course for an Australian University at Southern Cross, Lismore, NSW, and in 2001 she completed a Masters Research on ‘Storytelling in African Teacher Training’ in post apartheid South Africa. She has been funded by the Australian Government to pilot creative courses and resources for children (0-12 yrs) with challenging behaviour. In 2008 she wrote a resource book Healing Stories for Challenging Behaviour published by Hawthorn Press (UK), now translated into several languages, including Chinese, Korean, Portuguese and Croatian. She is the author of Therapeutic Storytelling:: 101 Healing Stories for Children--published by Hawthorn Press (UK, 2012)--an authoritative guide to an emerging new field of therapeutic storytelling for children and adults., MEd, www.healingstories.com; Two panelists will host this session, Dr Hilton Koppe, a family medicine physician and teacher, and Susan Perrow (M.Ed), a writer, therapeutic storyteller and teacher. Hilton and Susan have two things in common - they are both from the same coastal village 'down under' (Lennox Head, Australia) and they both have a passion for the use of imagination, creative writing and storytelling in their work. Hilton has integrated the use of stories into his clinical work as a means of improving the patient-practitioner relationship. He has developed a series of creative writing workshops to help prevent burnout and compassion fatigue in health practitioners, and to deepen communication with young people living with chronic illness. Hilton uses stories and the arts to enhance the learning experience of his family medicine residents and medical students. Susan writes, collects and documents stories that offer a therapeutic journey for both the storyteller and listener – a positive, imaginative way of helping transform difficult behaviour and situations through the medium of story. She runs therapeutic storytelling workshops for teachers and health professionals from China to Africa, Europe to America and across her own sun-drenched land of Australia. Her two books, Healing Stories for Challenging Behaviour and Therapeutic Storytelling have been translated into many languages, including Chinese, Croatian, Korean and Portuguese. In this interactive session, examples will be shared by both panelists of how imaginative approaches have helped people of all ages in both the clinical setting and in the teaching environment. The panelists will bring many life experiences and anecdotes on this theme, then invite the audience to share their experiences.Objectives: Participants will experience ways in which working with metaphor and story can enhance clinical practice; experience ways in which working with metaphor and story can assist young people living with chronic illness or behavioural issues; participate in a simple fun creative writing exercise; participate in a metaphor/mind map exercise. |
| 8:30 AM — 9:45 AM session 4 MERF 2117 |
The Med Poets Society [Discussion forum] Rachel Hammer Rachel Hammer is a third year medical student at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and an MFA candidate in creative writing through Seattle Pacific University. She serves on the Humanities in Medicine Committee at Mayo Clinic, and organizes workshops for medical students locally at Mayo, and nationally with AMSA., MFA, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine; The Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and the University of Iowa School of Medicine presents an entertaining gathering in which medical students will read creative work they have authored while on the wards and from within their laboratories. The format will be open-mic, and pieces may range from the macabre to the hilarious. Moth-style storytelling and musical performances are also encouraged.Objectives: Participants will witness the creative work of medical students and are invited to reflect on how the pressures of medical education influence artistic expression. Participants will, hopefully, have fun and affiliate with one another. |
| 10 AM — 11:15 AM session 5 MERF 1117 |
Brain in a Jar: A Daughter's Journey Through Her Father's Memory [Reading] Nancy Bercaw Nancy Stearns Bercaw has written for newspapers from the Korea Herald to the New York Times. One of her articles, “When All Isn’t Enough to Foil Alzheimer’s,” about her neurologist father's lifelong battle with the disease, appeared in the "Cases" section of the New York Times on January 17, 2011. The story was picked up by 30 other news publications in the United States, Canada, South America and Europe. Bercaw's book, Brain in a Jar: A Daugther's Journey Through Her Father's Memory, featuring a special introduction by Senator Bob Kerrey and former Speaker Newt Gingrich, will be published by Broadstone Books in April 2013., BA, University of Vermont; Brain in a Jar is a personal account of a daughter’s journey through her father’s memory and his lifelong obsession with Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Beauregard Lee Bercaw became a neurologist after watching his own father die of AD. Dr. Bercaw kept his father’s brain in a jar on his office desk as a reminder of what he was fighting in his patients and in himself. When he hit middle age, Dr. Bercaw began to experiment with diet supplements. By age 56, he was taking 78 tablets a day. After retiring from his neurology practice, he spent hours a day doing math. Even when his daughter was visiting, he’d sit silently on his leather recliner with a calculator to verify the accuracy of calculations he did by memory. “What are you saving your mind for, Dad?” Nancy often wondered to herself. “I’m here now, waiting to talk with you.” On one of these occasions, Dr. Bercaw suddenly looked up from his Sudoku game. “Promise me something, Gal,” he said. “Anything,” she answered. “Swear that you will put a gun to my head if I wind up like my father.” Nancy’s brain was unable to reconcile his request. It wasn’t fair or logical to ask a child to kill her own parent. “Swear to me,” he repeated. “I swear,” she said, but privately vowed to one day tell the story of a man she couldn’t possibly kill—even if his mind betrayed them both. Dr. Bercaw died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease in April 2012. Nancy kept her promise to their story of madness and memory. Brain in a Jar explores the ethics of genetic testing for incurable diseases and assisted suicide for Alzheimer’s patients.Objectives: Participants will analyze the ethics of genetic testing for incurable disease and assisted suicide for Alzheimer's patients. Also, participants will be able to discuss storytelling as healing. "Fierce with Reality": Writing with Bipolar [Reading] Amy Nolan Born, raised, and educated in Michigan, Amy Nolan is currently an Associate Professor of English at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, where she teaches creative writing, composition, literature, the graphic novel, and film. She has published both creative nonfiction and scholarly essays, including “Seeing is Digesting: Labyrinths of Historical Ruin in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining,” which appears in the peer-reviewed journal Cultural Critique (Issue 77, 2011). Her most recent publication, a creative nonfiction essay titled “Working for the Devil,” is in The Examined Life Journal of the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine (Fall 2012). “A New Myth to Live By: The Graphic World of Kathy Acker,” appears in the peer-reviewed journal Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction (May 2012). Her essay, “The Anorexic Logic of American Psycho,” was published in Bright Lights Film Journal in 2007. In 2009, her personal essay, “Close to the Bones,” was published in The Bellevue Literary Review, and was awarded the essay with an Honorable Mention for the Carter V. Cooper Prize contest., PhD, Wartburg College; At forty, I did not set out to write a memoir about being diagnosed as having bipolar disorder (type II). I set out to write about, and hopefully make sense of, my experiences as workplace murder witness when I was in my early twenties. But in the course of writing it, I began to see my choices, along with the suffering I'd experienced for most of my life, at least in part, as the result of brain chemistry with which I was born. Being bipolar complicated already-traumatic events by affecting my reactions to them. I was not diagnosed with bipolar until I was almost thirty-six. At first, as is common among the newly diagnosed, I denied it. As I have learned more about it—and the differences between bipolar I and II, as well as “regular” depression and anxiety—I have been humbled by the hold it has had for much of my life. In particular, I have been curious about its effect on my memory and relationships with others. While I am not happy about the diagnosis, I am relieved by the clarity it has afforded me: the way it has helped me re-frame events and perspectives I’ve experienced throughout my entire life. I am learning to also accept its gifts, which have also been with me since childhood: a vivid imagination, exquisite sensitivity in mind and body, the ability to feel deeply and fully. Now, even though I’m not about to wear a t-shirt emblazoned with the word “bipolar,” I’m not afraid of it anymore. I am still learning about it, and as I do, I find new clarity and compassion for the girl and young woman I was.Objectives: Participants will discuss and reflect on the medical effects of being bipolar, in relation to creative writing, teaching, and understanding what at first may have seemed like incomprehensible experiences. |
| 10 AM — 11:15 AM session 5 MERF 2117 |
Soul Stories: Homeless Journeys Told Through Feet [Discussion forum] Josephine Ensign Josephine Ensign teaches health policy at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her literary non-fiction essays have appeared in The Sun, The Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Silk Road, The Examined Life Journal, and an essay is included in I Wasn’t Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse, edited by Lee Gutkind (In Fact Books, 2013). She is writing a book entitled Catching Homelessness, a narrative nonfiction account of her work as a nurse practitioner providing health care to homeless people while navigating her own passage through homelessness. She writes a blog “Medical Margins” on health policy and nursing (josephineensign.com)., DrPH, University of Washington; Soul Stories is a writing and photography project resulting in a collection of essays, poems and photographs of the stories feet can tell about homelessness—the memories written on feet. Part of my work at the University of Washington involves being a faculty preceptor for foot clinics at area homeless shelters. These are service-learning projects for students in nursing, medicine (pre-clinical), public health, and dental schools. Groups of students provide basic foot care to Seattle’s most marginalized, most traumatized homeless people. For Soul Stories I work with homeless foot clinic patients who tell me the stories of their feet through poetry or prose. I also write my own responses from the perspective of being a health care provider with the lived experience of homelessness. These ‘alternative’ patient and provider narratives accompany photographs of foot care. They are used to help train future health care providers in how to listen closely for things that matter to patients. The overall goal is to aid in the development of compassionate health care providers, as well as to help students make connections between individual patient care and larger social and health policy issues. For the conference attendees I will present examples of the short essays, poems and photographs, along with concrete suggestions for using similar projects for education of health care professionals.Objectives: Participants will gain an increase in knowledge and skills in how to develop an interprofessional service-learning project incorporating narrative medicine techniques. |
| 10 AM — 11:15 AM session 5 CBRB 1289 |
The History of Present Illness [Discussion forum] Margaret Nolan Maggie is a first year family medicine resident at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. She has focused on the humanities in medicine, specifically poetry, during her clinical training thus far and hopes to combine a career in public health and medical journalism., MD, Mayo Clinic Rochester; The greatest novels, the ones that follow us so intimately through life that we find our own memories blur with those of the protagonist, shape and form who we are. We assimilate the experience of these characters into our own and it forever colors our interpretation of the world. As Professor Jeff Nunokawa, a Victorian literature professor at Princeton, writes of the novel, “If we are able to find our way amongst the weights of the world, that is because of those central characters who have had their way through us.” What the novelist accomplishes so richly through text, the patient similarly accomplishes in the narrative of the “history of present illness.” The “HPI,” as it is referred to, is not the whole novel, but a vignette. And yet, the vignette we as doctors are privileged to hear can be so much more intense and concentrated, with beginning and end covered in a few sentences, that it can have the same effect as reading the entire novel. These patient histories become intertwined with our own memories so intimately that they, too, shape and form the doctor and the person we become. They help us to navigate the weight of the world, which can feel especially heavy and onerous in the world of medicine. I have been collecting vignettes drawn from patient HPIs during my intern year in Family Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. I will start by reading some of these vignettes to begin discussion, and then open the floor for others to share their own vignettes. In the act of telling these stories, we perpetuate the insight and power they contain, and we honor the patients who have inspired and challenged us, both personally and professionally.Objectives: Participants will hear some of the patient vignettes from my first year at the Mayo Clinic that have particularly shaped and influenced me as a person and a new physician, and share some of their own vignettes that have stayed with them and shaped their view of the world or the way they practice medicine. |
| 10:00 AM — 11:15 AMsession 5MERF 2189
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The Methods We Use: What works and why? [Workshop]Nellie HermannNellie Hermann, Creative Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, is a graduate of Brown University and the MFA program at Columbia University. Her first novel, The Cure for Grief (Scribner: 2008), received national acclaim in such publications as Time Magazine, Elle, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and others, and was chosen as a Target “Breakout” book. Her non-fiction has appeared in an anthology about siblings, Freud’s Blindspot (Free Press: 2010), as well as in Academic Medicine. Over the last eight years she has taught fiction and narrative medicine to undergraduates, medical students, graduate students, and clinicians of all sorts., MFA, Program in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University;
Maura SpiegelMaura Spiegel has a joint appointment at Columbia University and Barnard College where she teaches literature, film and American Studies. As Associate director of the Program for Narrative Medicine at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, she teaches film to second-year medical students as well as graduate students in the Master of Science Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia. She co-authored The Grim Reader: Writings on Death, Dying and Living on (Anchor/Doubleday), The Breast Book: An Intimate and Curious History (Workman), which was a Book-of-the-Month Club-Quality Paperbacks selection; she has recently edited and introduced new editions of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes for the Barnes & Noble Classics Series. With Rita Charon, MD, PhD, she co-edited the journal Literature and Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press) for seven years. She has written for The New York Times and Newsday, and has published articles and essays on many topics. She is currently writing a book on the life of Sidney Lumet (St. Martin’s Press)., PhD, Program in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University
Scholars, writers, clinicians, and all those engaged in work in the humanities in and around medicine bring their own set of tools to the growth of the field and to its practice. So where can and do we all meet? Perhaps it can or should be in our methods, in the ways that we engage interested parties in the work. In this workshop, participants will join in a demonstration, as a jumping off point, of the traditional methods used by The Program in Narrative Medicine: close reading of a text and writing to a prompt given in its shadow. After experiencing the methods, we will invite participants to bring forward brief texts (e.g., a paragraph of prose or a short poem) that they might use to facilitate a similar workshop. We will fishbowl in order to give some participants the opportunity to use these methods with feedback from the group. Focus will be on appropriateness of texts, techniques for leading discussion, and writing prompts. Participants: please choose a brief published text that you would use to facilitate a workshop and bring it with you. Also please bring a writing prompt you would use to accompany the text.Objectives: Participants will experience the traditional methods of narrative medicine, and discuss and analyze specific phases of the process of facilitating workshops.
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| 11:15 AM — 12:30 PM MERF Atrium |
Poster Session/Book and Information Fair Share your work with your colleagues, and display your books and materials. (Most materials and books will be available throughout the conference. However, this time is set aside for you to visit with those displaying the items.) |
| 11:45 AM — 12:30 PM MERF Atrium |
Lunch |
| 12:45 PM — 2 PM MERF 2117 This session is open to the public. |
Uselessness [Featured Presentation] Chris Adrian Chris Adrian is the author of three novels, Gob's Grief, The Children's Hospital, and The Great Night, and a collection of stories, A Better Angel. His short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and Best American Short Stories, among other publications and anthologies. He trained in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at the University of California San Francisco, holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, and has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. He lives in New York and is currently the Writer in Residence for the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons., MD, Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons Program in Narrative Medicine; If artists and writers are sometimes, or even very often, anxious about the possibility of any practical good coming out of their work, what does that mean for people in the medical humanities who hope that narratively competent care and creatively inflected medical training will make a positive difference in the experience of illness shared by patients and caregivers? This talk will explore the speaker's anxiety of artistic and clinical uselessness, and will hope to suggest that the same reassurances that might comfort the artist against despair of ever doing useful good in the world might be tonic as well for medical providers and their patients.Objectives: Participants will reflect, perhaps usefully, on their own anxieties of uselessness as artists, medical providers, humanists, and scholars. |
| 2:15 PM — 3:30 PM session 6 MERF 1117 |
Still Life and the Ethic of Long Habitation [Workshop] Rachel Hammer Rachel Hammer is a third year medical student at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and an MFA candidate in creative writing through Seattle Pacific University. She serves on the Humanities in Medicine Committee at Mayo Clinic, and organizes workshops for medical students locally at Mayo, and nationally with AMSA., MFA, Mayo Clinic College of MedicineThe best gestures art can make in the face of death, Mark Doty writes, are tenderness and style. The unparaphrasability of a poem, the wordlessness and timelessness of a painting, the eternal sublime of Matisse odalisques are all emergent properties made manifest through long acts of seeing—long habitation, akin to mindfulness and meditation—skills every writer must come to live by. Doty renders gorgeous scenes without the aid of verbs. A reader’s imagination fills in the action denied by the omission of a verb, and similarly, the improvisational exercise of tableau reveals a related phenomenon: how quickly our minds seek out and make stories where there is only posture. Of still life, Doty says, “The secret subject of these paintings is what they resist. What they deny is also the underlying force.” Still life points to the human by leaving the human out, which is the particular strength and the challenging art of still life. The human drive to story our world permeates even its objects, so that even fruit on a plate becomes an intimate totem. This session will combine meditation and mindfulness techniques with narrative medicine methodologies of close reading and writing in the shadow of an excerpt from Doty’s Still Life with Oysters and Lemon with a tableau theater exercise utilized in an acting course “Telling the Patient’s Story” taught at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine.Objectives: Participants will Participants will experience narrative medicine methodologies, practice mindfulness techniques with 17th century Dutch still life paintings, complete one improvisational theater exercise in tableau-formation and discuss how the impulse to story affects work within the healthcare profession. |
| 2:15 PM — 3:30 PM session 6 MERF 2117 |
The Life Stories Project: Connecting College Students and Older Adults for Collaborative Writing [Discussion forum] Shelby Myers-Verhage Shelby Myers-Verhage teaches composition courses and developmental reading and writing at Kirkwood Community College’s Iowa City Campus. She earned her MAT in English Education from the University of Iowa and is pursuing a second MA in Developmental Reading. After over a decade teaching Language Arts in public schools and a few years teaching pre-service teachers at the university level, she joined the Kirkwood faculty full-time in 2005. She was awarded the NISOD Excellence in Teaching Award in 2008, the Kirkwood Difference Award in 2011, the University of Iowa Teaching and Learning Accomplishment Award in 2011, and the Kirkwood Endowed Chair Research Award in 2012. Her teaching interests include portfolios as learning tools, the power of story in writing and reading, learning beyond the classroom, and helping novice writers find their voices through writing., MAT, Kirkwood Community College; Words shape our lives in the stories we share with others. The power of conversation takes on an important role as a way to bridge the divides between generations. It is through these conversations that we learn from others and ourselves, in the words we use to build our arguments, tell the stories of our lives, and shape our futures. Students in a composition classroom in a community college were paired with older adults in our community to create a collaborative project. Through interviews and research, students compiled a “Life Stories Project”, culminating with a book and set of interview CDs given to their senior partner. Students had to grapple with the words of others alongside their own reflections as they wove together these interviews and narrative experiences, as well as negotiating the generational gaps between college students and older adults. By adding the authentic audience, the students have had to do writing that is real and valued beyond their instructor’s assessment, which makes the stakes that much higher for doing quality work. Finally, over the years, the project has become a way for caregivers and family to connect with older adults as their memories fade. This session will share the perspectives of the Life Stories Project from the instructor, student, and older adult participants.Objectives: Participants will collect tools for creating their own “Life Stories” Project with students, families, and caregivers in an older adult community on a beginning or on-going basis. We’ll discuss how to get to the stories that matter and begin some of our own “story collecting” within the session. |
| 2:15 PM — 3:30 PMsession 6MERF 2189
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Facing Our Mornings [Discussion forum]Nicholas GregoryNicholas Gregory is a sixth year MD/PhD student at the University of Iowa. As a member of the Neuroscience Program, he studies the role of exercise in chronic muscle pain and participates in the Carver College of Medicine Humanities Distinction Track. He graduated from Wabash College in 2007 with a degree in Biology and English., BA, University of Iowa
Five years ago I had the vague idea that I wanted to write a novel. So, without qualification or even a story to speak of, I started writing. The process has been humbling. After struggling to find a voice, switching genres, and starting over (a few times), I finally have something I’m proud of. This session will address the missteps and obstacles that threaten to shut down the creative impulses of medical and graduate students, and provide suggestions for staying productive (and, more importantly, happy). Further, the session will include early (embarrassing) writing samples as well as more polished work, with corresponding discussion on how my approach to writing has evolved.Objectives: Participants will Participants will be able to automate creativity using forced morphological connections, analyze their writing with basic readability software, and identify and take steps to address some common blocks to writing. They will also hear a selection of poetry and fiction written by the presenter.
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| 2:15 PM — 3:30 PMsession 6CBRB 1289
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Pipebird: a Collection of Poems and Short Stories Regarding Grief [Reading]David ShahaI am a fourth year medical student at the University of Iowa Carver College Carver of Medicine completing the Humanities Distinction Track. Writing has always been a way for me to process my experiences and never more so than as a medical student. I majored in English at Brigham Young University where I met my wife. We have a daughter who is almost 2 years old. I'll begin a residency program in Family Medicine with the US Army at Fort Belvoir, Virginia beginning in July., BA, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine
Grief is a universal human experience. Poetry and prose are powerful tools to convey aspects of this shared condition. I have written various pieces on the subject using these two mediums during my years in medical school. At this reading, I will share some of my compositions with the hope that they will increase understanding and empathy for those who grieve and inspire others to undertake similar efforts to describe the grief they suffer and/or witness.Objectives: Participants will Listen to several of my compositions and ask questions if they would like.
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| 3:45 PM — 5 PM session 7 MERF 2189 |
Remembering and Imagining: Reading in Community [Discussion forum] Nancy Gross Nancy was a longtime full-time faculty member at the City University of New York teaching academic writing to non-native English speakers. She also has many years of experience of being with people at the end of life. Nancy received a Masters of Medical Humanities degree in 2007. She has studied at Columbia University’s Narrative Medicine program. Since 2005, Nancy has been at Overlook Medical Center as the palliative care community liaison and humanities educator. In her role as a humanities educator she works with resident physicians, hospital professional and support staff, community members and patients bringing humanities activities to support reflection and to evoke stories of illness and insight into the illness experience. The goal of her sustained work is to illuminate the voices of patients, families and clinicians as they intersect at the time of illness. Nancy has developed many programs which support this work at the hospital. She works with people in helping them tell their stories., MA, MMH, Overlook Medical Center/Atlantic Health; Reading, and especially reading in community, engenders multiple ways of knowing. By close reading of text, we remember, in relationship to those we are reading about and to those we are reading with. We remember what has happened to us, and we imagine what may happen to us. Overlook Medical Center in Summit, New Jersey has participated in the national Literature and Medicine [Humanities at the Heart of Healthcare©] program since 2005. Since that time, over 100 health care professionals have read together. Not every literary selection is explicitly focused on a medical encounter. However, each text is chosen for how it illuminates the human condition. As we remember personal events or imagine those to come, we connect across disciplines and experiences to express our human needs, desires, and fears. We talk of life, illness and death. From this successful program, additional programs have been spawned which bring together various readers to reflect in community: a group of community members reading about serious illness and end of life; hospital chaplains reading about illness in light of personalized spirituality; medical residents reading and reflecting about practice; people living with stroke and Parkinson’s and their care partners reading and reflecting on the illness experience; people living with Alzheimer’s reading and remembering with clarity; clinicians and staff participating in a poetry/prose slam and poetry workshops; staff in long term care facilities reading to foster community and enhance communication. This session will engage participants in a literature and medicine experience and will present the nuts and bolts of designing, implementing and sustaining these programs in the medical milieu. Curricula and reading lists will be distributed.Objectives: Participants will interpret text for unique and universal elements; identify strategies to design, implement and sustain literature and medicine experiences at medical institutions; utilize specific pedagogy to effectively manage group discussions and writing experiences; and tailor curricula for specific groups, goals and needs. |
| 3:45 PM — 5 PM session 7 MERF 2117 |
Narrative Medicine: Undergraduate Perspectives [Panel discussion] Joshua Dolezal Joshua Dolezal is associate professor of English at Central College, where he teaches American literature, creative writing, and the medical humanities. His scholarship has recently appeared in Medical Humanities, Literature and Medicine, Cather Studies, and Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment., PhD, Central College; Students on this panel will present papers from "Illness and Health in Literature," a course at Central College. Papers will integrate scholarship and personal narrative to address issues in narrative medicine such as the doctor-patient relationship, grief and illness, cancer, and mental illness.Objectives: Participants will discuss the paper topics with the panelists and other attendees during a Q&A session to follow the presentations. Helpful suggestions to students about presentation or research are also encouraged. |
| 3:45 PM — 5 PM session 7 MERF 1117 |
Medicine, Memory, Mnemosyne: The Found Poem [Workshop] Serena Fox Serena J. Fox is an intensive care physician at Beth Israel Medical Center in NYC. She has also served as a consultant in bedside medical ethics and a human rights advocate. She believes deeply that poetry and the humanities have essential roles in the teaching of medicine and care-giving. Her poems have appeared in the Paris Review, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Western Humanities Review. Her book of poems, Night Shift, is the basis for a series of poetry and medicine seminars that she facilitated in the NYU School of Medicine Master Scholars Program for Humanities in Medicine., MD, Beth Israel Medical Center; Mnemosyne, Titan goddess of memory and remembrance, is the inventor of language and words. She is the mother of the Muses, the original patron goddess of poets from the oral tradition, and, early on, presides over a minor, underground oracle at Trophonios in Boitia. How all encompassing are the Greeks’ endowments to their Muses! This workshop uses the writing of a ’found’ poem to explore how elements of poetry might trigger and enhance memory, or conversely remember its loss and in so doing keep memory alive. A found poem consists of existing texts that are structured and ordered by the poet. It can be thought of as the literary equivalent to the collage. Much can be learned by noticing the choices and omissions we make during the process of writing a found poem. Attention will be given to carving out protected time and space for writers and lovers of poetry who enjoy the physicality of the form. We will spend a short time defining the ‘found’ poem and then concentrate on writing, reciting and reacting. As scientists we probe the pathology of the brain, molecule by molecule, to define and defy its losses. As clinicians we try to mitigate symptoms. We have just begun to cultivate the arts, perhaps as a physiology of perception, to bypass disintegration and trigger memory. Music and movement increasingly contribute to our ‘treatment’ of diseases such as dementia. Poetry engages the interface of memory effaced and memory, again, invoked. Reminder: If possible, bring in materials for your ‘collage’.Objectives: Participants will to write and share a ‘found’ poem. During the process, participants will also learn the characteristics of a 'found' poem and explore how elements of poetry trigger and transcend memory. Note: Before arriving, please put the word ‘memory’ into your awareness. Write down individual lines (not paragraphs) that resonate with you. These can be overheard comments, observations, lines from conference presentations, moods, reactions, facts, sentences from newspapers, bits of conversation, an image, a sound. Choose 8-14 lines that stand out to you to use for your poem, but bring all of them in. |
| 7:30 PM Englert Theatre 221 E Washington St, Downtown Iowa City. This session is open to the public. General public tickets here. |
Broken Chord [Featured Presentation] Working Group Theatre Working Group Theatre's original plays, events and educational programs are created in collaboration with artists and community partners to engage a diverse audience and present the untold stories in the world around us. They seek to involve their audience in the stories we tell as commentators and collaborators and reach out to new audiences by eliminating the social and economic barriers to theatre attendance., , Working Group Theatre; How do we remember? Why do we forget? What happens when we can no longer pull from the well of memory that lies within us? The Broken Chord, a full-length play weaving direct testimony and interviews with storytelling and poetry, will be the culmination of a year-long collaboration between Working Group Theatre and Hancher. Designed to collect, archive, and present the personal stories of those working on the front lines of memory and aging research and patient care, as well as those who are suffering from memory-related diseases, the show features an interactive set design and uses professional actors and community members to tell the story of how we understand memory and cope with its loss. |