Gender and Genre: Medical Humanities and the Moving Image

Hosted jointly by the Narrative Practices Lab and the Visual and Material Lab in Durham University’s Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities and Linköping University’s Division of Gender Studies, Department of Thematic Studies, the day will be themed around the intersection of genre and gender, exploring ideas at the cutting edge of Literary Studies, Art History and Visual Studies, Film Studies, Critical Theory, Feminist Philosophy, Queer and Trans Theory, and Medical Humanities. We invite presentations on any aspect of the moving image: from visual social media content to moving image artworks to film and television, and anything in between or beyond.

We look forward to exploring how gender and genre are co-constituted, and how their inter-relations shapes ideas and experiences of health and illness. We hope to hear about how the visual and the narrative inter-relate, how genre can both limit and enable the depiction of experiences of illness, and how stories, visual forms, physical experiences, and aesthetic modes can be gendered, and can shape our experiences of gender. The day will explore the moving image as method in the medical humanities, foregrounding the ways that the visual can open up what it’s possible to know, to experience, to express. The symposium brings together themes of embodiment, power, art, story, meaning, knowledge, and history to tie conceptual questions about the nature and politics of visual representation to tangible examples in our lives, our bodies, and our experiences of illness and disability.

The day will bring together scholars from a range of disciplines, offering opportunities for connection and the possibility of future collaboration. We look forward to exploring together the future of the moving image in Medical Humanities, and to considering new horizons for this field of work.

The symposium is convened by the Narrative Practices Lab co-led by Veronica Heney, the Visual and Material Lab led by Fiona Johnstone, and Edyta Just from Linköping University.

Register and find out more about the schedule and speakers via Eventbrite.