Location: Tinkham Veale University Center Ballroom A, 11038 Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH 44106
2018 CLEVELAND HUMANITIES FESTIVAL: HEALTH
Life’s problems are often best approached in companionship with a story that offers guidance, and what guidance that is can vary considerably. The Hamlet in the Hospital project involves small groups performing readers’ theatre and then talking about how the play might be a companion in their work and lives. In this talk, Arthur Frank, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Calgary, Professor at VID Specialized University, Bergen, Norway, and core faculty at the Center for Narrative Practice in Boston, will discuss how in these discussions, they practice what he calls “vulnerable reading”; that is, reading to discover how a literary work can be a companion during times of suffering.
About the speaker:
Arthur Frank is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Calgary, where he has taught since 1975. He currently is professor at VID Specialized University, Bergen, Norway, and core faculty at the Center for Narrative Practice in Boston. He lives in Calgary.
Trained as a medical sociologist (Ph.D., Yale, 1975), he is the author of a memoir of critical illness, At the Will of the Body (1991; new edition 2002); a study of first-person illness narratives,The Wounded Storyteller (1995; expanded edition, 2013); a book on care as dialogue, The Renewal of Generosity: Illness, Medicine and How to Live (2004); and most recently, a book on how stories affect our lives, Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-narratology (2010).
Dr. Frank has been visiting professor at the University of Sydney, Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Keio University in Tokyo, and the University of Toronto, and a visiting fellow in bioethics at the University of Otago, New Zealand. For many years he was book review editor of the journal health: an interdisciplinary journal and among other editorial board appointments, he is a contributing editor to Literature and Medicine.
Dr. Frank is an elected Fellow of The Hastings Center and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He was the 2008 recipient of the Abbyann Lynch Medal for Bioethics, awarded by the Royal Society of Canada, and he was the 2016 recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award, awarded by the Canadian Bioethics Society.