Throughout this year, CHH are hosting a series of seminars by key figures in UK medical humanities. See details of our first session below:
Professor Katherine Southwood
‘When an illness is viewed as resulting from carelessness … the ill person becomes treated with moral opprobrium’ (Lupton 2012:50): Job’s body as “sin visualised”.
Wednesday 26th September
16.30 – 18.30
Room 5.29, Virginia Woolf Building
King’s College London, 22 Kingsway
London, WC2B 6LE
“As the success of Angels in America illustrates, a complex nexus of problems emerge when questions concerning illness and responsibility collide. This paper will focus on the way the body in pain is expressed, and reacted to, within the book of Job. It will use diverse examples of culturally-based explanations of illness (as opposed to “disease” which implies a biomedical perspective) as a unique way of sharpening insight into the social dynamics fuelling the acrimonious dialogue between Job and his friends. Key areas of analysis include the notion of “sin visualised” and the theme of the “sinful” body, as expressed through moralising language surrounding the body; philological details concerning the expression of pain in Job; and symbolic protest expressed through the idea of an attacking deity.”
If you would like to register your interest in this event, or have any questions or queries, please contact James Rakoczi at chh@kcl.ac.uk.
To see upcoming speakers in our seminar series, please click here for a timetable of CHH events in the 2018/19 academic year.
Humanities and Health 