Literature and the Healing Arts is a lecture series that focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to the humanities. It is sponsored by the English Department at the University at Albany, SUNY, and is made possible by a generous grant from the Dibner Fund.

Many writers would agree with D.H. Lawrence's observation that "one shed's one's sicknesses in books--repeats and presents again one's emotions, to be master of them." The lecture series will explore the therapeutic implications of reading and writing, including the mysterious relationship between creativity and illness. Topics will include the commonalities between the "talking cure" and the "writing cure," narrative medicine, aesthetic surgery, trauma theory, death and dying, bearing witness, and empathic reading. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Leo Tolstoy, William Carlos Williams, Richard Selzer, and Lucy Grealy are a few of the creative writers whose work will be discussed.

Five internationally recognized speakers (literary critics, creative writers, psychotherapists, and physicians) will each address the healing implications of the humanities. All five speakers have had distinguished teaching careers at universities and have published widely in their fields. Each talk will be about an hour long followed by a question-and-answer period. Chapel House (Note Exception 2/19) 7:00-9:00 p.m., Perimeter Road UAlbany Uptown Campus February 7, 2002 (Thursday) ILIANA SEMMLER, Ph.D. "Fashioning Nature: Literature's Judgment on Aesthetic Surgery" February 19, 2002 (Tuesday) (NOTE location and time change: RECITAL HALL, PAC at 8:00 p.m.) LUCY GREALY, MFA "A Reading from Autobiography of a Face" Cosponsored by the NYS Writers Institute March 19, 2002 (Tuesday) SOPHIE FREUD, Ph.D. "Humanities and the Healing Arts" April 4, 2002 (Thursday) MICHAEL KAUFMAN, Ph.D. "McMedicine: Tolstoy's Anatomy of Human Frailty" April 16, 2002 (Tuesday) RITA CHARON, M.D., Ph.D. "The Parallel Chart" For further infomation contact: Jeffrey Berman, Department of English (518) 442-4084 / [email protected]