Health Humanities Lecture Archives

January 19, 2022
5:00 - 6:30 pm
Online

Institutional Racism: Remembering Struggle, Survival, and Resistance at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, 1902-2015

Susan Burch, PhD
Professor of American Studies
​Middlebury College

January 24, 2022
5:00 - 6:30 pm
Online

The Afterlives of Trauma: Art and Memory

Laura S. Levitt, PhD
Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies and Gender
Temple University

January 31, 2022
5:00 - 6:30 pm
Online

What to Expect When You’re Expecting Robots: The Future of Human Robot Collaboration

Julie Shah, PhD
Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

February 28, 2022
5:00 - 6:30 pm
Online

Cost of Living: Personal Reflections

Emily Maloney, MFA
Author


 

March 16, 2022
5:00 - 6:30 pm
Online
 

Consequences of Receiving or Being Denied an Abortion in the United States

Diana Greene Foster, PhD
Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences
University of California, San Francisco

March 21, 2022
5:00 - 6:30 pm
Online

Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War

Paul Scharre, PhD
Vice President and Director of Studies
Center for a New American Security

April 4, 2022
5:00 - 6:30 pm
Online

Deconstructing PTSD / Destigmatizing Trauma

Abdel Hamid Afana, PhD
Research Fellow, Trauma and Global Health Program
McGill University
President, International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims

Monday, September 13
7:00 – 8:00 pm
Online

Treat Donors Like Philanthropists: Overcoming Barriers to Kidney Donation from Living Donors

Martha Gershun, MBA
Nonprofit consultant, writer, community volunteer, and living kidney donor

John D. Lantos MD
Director, Pediatric Bioethics; Glasnapp Foundation Endowed Chair in Bioethics; Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City; Research Professor of Pediatrics, University of Kansas

Monday September 27
5:00 – 6:00 pm
Online

Disrupted Morphology: Progress, Electricity, and Medicine in Toulouse-Lautrec

Alexandra Courtois de Vicose, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History
Kenyon College

Monday, October 4
5:00 – 6:00 pm
Online

The Disabled Body in Art: A Conversation with Sarah Seene

Sarah Seene
Film director and photographer

Wednesday, November 10
5:00 – 6:00 pm
Online

The Science, Art, and Technology of Emotional Literacy and Well-being

Melissa Cesarano, PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Columbia University
Co-Founder, Affectifi, Inc.

Ilya Lyashevsky, PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Columbia University
Co-Founder, Affectifi, Inc.

Thursday, January 16
5:00 – 6:30 pm
602 Cathedral of Learning

The Maternal Imprint: Gender, Heredity, and the Biosocial Body

Sarah S. Richardson, PhD
Professor of the History of Science and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality
Harvard University

Monday, February 10
5:00 – 6:30 pm
501 Cathedral of Learning

Writing about Intellectual Disability

Marina Clementi
MFA candidate
The Writing Program University of Pittsburgh

Boen Wang
MFA candidate
The Writing Program University of Pittsburgh

Monday, February 24
5:00 – 6:30 pm
501 Cathedral of Learning

Poetry, Healing, and Helping Others Heal

Wendy Scott, MFA, MSW
Poet and author of Soon I Will Build an Ark

Thursday, March 5
5:00 – 6:30 pm
501 Cathedral of Learning

The Postgenomic Condition: Truth, Race and Justice After the Genome

Jenny Reardon, PhD
Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center
University of California, Santa Cruz

Friday, March 20
8:30 am – 4:30 pm
Scaife Hall 11^th Floor
Conference Center

Medical Ethics 2020: Ethical Challenges of  Established and Emerging Medical Technologies

Keynote Presenters:

Frankenswine and the Suffering Un-dead: A Bioethical Look at Restoring Function in Post-mortem Pig Brains
Steve Latham, JD, PhD (Yale)
 

Ethics and Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: Beyond the Hype
Alex John London, PhD (CMU)

Dilemmas and Disparities: Dialysis Decision-making Among Seriously Ill Patients with Kidney Disease
Nwamaka D. Eneanya, MD, MPH (Penn)
 

Thursday, April 2
4:00 – 5:30 pm
501 Cathedral of Learning

The Complex Politics of Sleeping Sickness Control

Mari Webel, PhD
Assistant Professor of History
University of Pittsburgh

Monday, September 16
5:00 – 6:30 pm
602 Cathedral of Learning

How the Arts Helped Me Find Meaning in Death

Haider Warraich, MD
Associate Director of Heart Failure at the Boston VA Associate Physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital Instructor at Harvard Medical School

Thursday, September 26
5:00 – 6:30 pm
602 Cathedral of Learning

How to Wait: Temporal Narratives of Medicalized Gender Transition

Victoria Pitts‐Taylor, PhD
Professor and Chair of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Wesleyan University

Thursday, October 10
5:15 – 6:45 pm
A115 Public Health

Neither Seen nor Heard: The Culture and Consequence of Clinical Dismissal

Sarah Manguso, MFA
Author of The Two Kinds of Decay and Ongoingness: The End of a Diary

Thursday, October 24
9:00 am – noon
The Andy Warhol Museum
117 Sandusky Street

Museums and Medicine: Divining Warhol, Drawing and Developing Clinical Skills

Tour and two curator talks exploring Warhol’s work on the body and art’s role in moral imagination and clinical discernment.

Friday, October 25
5:30 pm – 8:00 pm
The Senator John Heinz
History Museum
1212 Smallman Street

Disability and the Future: A Conversation with Rosemarie Garland‐Thomson on Conserving and Promoting Human Diversity

Rosemarie Garland‐Thomson, PhD
Professor of English
Emory University

Thursday, November 14
5:00 – 6:30 pm
111 Barco Law Building

Did Testosterone Cause the Crash of 2008? Science & Myths of Gender, Social Class, and Risk

Thursday, January 10
5:00 – 6:30 pm
G23 Public Health

Sex, Surveillance, and Social Control: Casting “Promiscuous” Women as Threats to National Security, and Incarcerating Them

Scott Stern
Historian

Thursday, January 31
5:00 – 7:00 pm

Carnegie Museum of Art
4400 Forbes Avenue

Medical Humanities Tours the Carnegie International—

Three Angles (2018), El Anatsui. Installation view at the 57th Carnegie International in 2018. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery. Photo: Bryan Conley.

Thursday, February 21
6:00 – 8:00 pm
University Club
Ballroom A

Racial Reconciliation, Institutional Morality, and the Social Life of DNA

Alondra Nelson, PhD
Professor of Sociology at Columbia University
President of the Social Science Research Council
 

Co-sponsored by the Department of Africana Studies 

Thursday, March 21
5:00 – 6:30 pm
602 Cathedral of Learning

Gender Before Birth: Sex Selection in a Transnational Context

Rajani Bhatia, PhD
Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
SUNY at Albany

Co-sponsored Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies and the Humanities Center

Friday, March 29
1:00 – 2:00 pm
11^th floor Scaife Hall

Spirituality, Medicine, and Quality of Life

Joel Tsevat, MD, MPH
Professor of Medicine, Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, UT Health San Antonio; 
Professor of Internal Medicine and of Population Health, Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin

Monday, April 1
5:00 – 6:30 pm
109 Barco Law Building

Queer Affect in Crip Landscapes: Disability, Desire, Devastation

Robert McRuer, PhD
Professor of English
The George Washington University

September 10, 2018
5:00 – 7:00 pm
Humanities Center
602 Cathedral of Learning

 Approaching Death: Philosophical and Cinematic Perspectives

Lucy Fischer, PhD
Distinguished Professor of English and Film Studies, Emerita; Author of Cinema by Design: Art Nouveau, Modernism, and Film History 
University of Pittsburgh

 
Mark Wicclair, PhD
Adjunct Professor of Medicine
University of Pittsburgh

September 24, 2018
5:00 – 6:30 pm
Humanities Center
602 Cathedral of Learning

Getting to the Soul of the Matter: Engaging patients in discussion of their religious/spiritual beliefs during medical encounters

Tara Cook, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor
Section of Palliative Care and Medical Ethics, Division of General Internal Medicine

Krissy Moehling, PhD, MPH
Senior Research Project Coordinator
PittVax Department of Family Medicine
 

September 27, 2018
3:00 – 5:00 pm
1414 Cathedral of Learning

5:30 – 7:15 pm
G23 Public Health

Exploring, Practicing, & Assessing Narrative Research Methods — a symposium for students, faculty, and researchers

Traditional and Emerging Methods for Narrative Research: Tools for data collection and analysis – afternoon panel

Narrative Methods Laboratory: A conversation with the widow of a double hand transplant patient

October 8, 2018
5:00 – 6:30 pm
Humanities Center
602 Cathedral of Learning

Until We Are Tested: Lessons Learned From Exploring the History of Women in Medicine Through Literary Narrative

Ami McKay
Journalist, playwright, and novelist
Nova Scotia, Canada

November 12, 2018
5:00 – 6:30 pm
Humanities Center
602 Cathedral of Learning

In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and theRedemptive Power of Hope by Rana Awdish, MD

Ritu Thamman, MD
Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine
University of Pittsburgh

December 3, 2018
5:00 – 6:30 pm
Humanities Center
602 Cathedral of Learning

On half-blood, half-breeds, and “the so-called purity of blood”: An examination of the role of genetics in the magical World of Harry Potter

Peter Blier, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics 
University of Massachusetts Medical School, Baystate                          

January 22, 2018
5:00 – 6:30 pm
602 Cathedral of Learning

What can blindness teach us about ‘seeing’? Molyneux, neuroplasticity, and technologies of sensory substitution

Mark W.D. Paterson, PhD
Assistant Professor in Sociology
University of Pittsburgh

 

February 5, 2018
5:00 – 6:30 pm
501 Cathedral of learning

Disabled Bodies and Genetic Enhancement:  A Phenomenological Critique

Tom Sparrow, PhD
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Slippery Rock University

February 26, 2018
5:00 – 6:30 pm
602 Cathedral of Learning

Working Toward the Rights of Intersex People

Alice Dreger, PhD
Author of One of Us:  Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal and Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex; Previously, Clinical Professor of Medical Humanities & and Bioethics, Northwestern University

March 19, 2018
5:00 – 6:30 pm
501 Cathedral of Learning

Straw into Gold:  The Risks, Rewards, and Power of Writing Your Medical Memoir

Katy Butler
Family caregiver, journalist, and author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door

April 9, 2018
5:00 – 6:30 pm
501 Cathedral of Learning

Cyborg on the Bridge to Nowhere: Problems from the Edge of Life

Jesse Soodalter, MD, MA
Clinical Instructor of Medicine
University of Pittsburgh

September 11, 2017
4:30 – 6:00 pm
Humanities Center 602 CL

Who Owns the Dead? The Science and Politics of Death at Ground Zero

Jay Aronson, PhD
Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, Department of History
Carnegie Mellon University

September 25, 2017
5:00 – 6:30 pm
Humanities Center 602 CL

Consciousness and End of Life Ethical Issues

Adina L. Roskies, PhD
Professor of Philosophy
Dartmouth College

October 16, 2017
6:00 pm
501 CL

Conscientious Objection and Professional Obligation: From Military Chaplains to Modern Medicine

Ronit Y. Stahl, PhD
Fellow, Department of Medical Ethics & Health  Policy, Perelman School of Medicine                        University of Pennsylvania

October 30, 2017
5:00 – 7:00 pm
Humanities Center 602 CL

Approaching Death: Philosophical and Cinematic Perspectives

Lucy Fischer, PhD
Distinguished Professor, Film Studies
University of Pittsburgh

Mark Wicclair, PhD
Professor of Philosophy, West Virginia University
Adjunct Professor of Medicine
University of Pittsburgh

November 16, 2017
Noon – 1:00
Herberman Conference Center
5230 Centre Avenue

What Patients Say, What Doctors Hear

Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine
New York University – NYU Langone Medical Center
Hospital

December 4, 2017
5:00 – 6:30 pm
501 CL

Don't Forget to Remember: The Importance of Family Recipes, Holiday Traditions, and Stories in the Grieving Process

Lori Jakiela, PhD
Professor of English and Creative/Professional Writing; Director of the Writing Program
University of Pittsburgh – Greensburg