As part of the “Innovation and the Humanities” series, the Department of English in association with the Technology Industry Liaison and Entrepreneurship Unit (TIE-U) & The Office for Research and Development organized a workshop titled Medical Humanities: Innovations in Literary-Cultural Studies for its postgraduate students. From the Department of English Prof. Anna Kurian and Prof. Pramod K. Nayar were the facilitators of the Conference.
Prof. G S Prasad, Director, TIE-U and Coordinator R&D, UoH, delivered the welcome address. The resource person was Dr. Neeraja Sundaram, Faculty, Azim Premji University. The aim of the workshop was to demonstrate to students how studies in the field of Medical Humanities are carried out. Dr. Sundaram delivered the inaugural talk which was open to all students, followed by the workshop with the registered participants. She had sent reading material (both literary and cultural texts) to the participants a week in advance which formed the required reading for the workshop.
The participants were divided into five groups of three. They extensively discussed the texts with Dr. Sundaram and were able to explore the various ways in which literary and theoretical methods can find relevance in medical and humanistic fields of enquiry such as the patient-physician relationship, understanding of the female body and abortion, caregiving, ageing, bioethics, biomedicine, among others.
Report by Athmika Tarun, MA English, participant
Photographs by Manoj Jayakumar, PhD scholar