Medical Humanities Roundtables III: Health/Death as Liberation: Death and Dying in Contemporary Cultural Production

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

Health/Death As Liberation is a series of roundtables that brings together researchers whose subjects of study are geographically diverse, but whose interests lie in the field of medical humanities and whose research explores new frameworks and perspectives to understand structures of power and oppression behind medical institutions, to examine state propaganda discourses in public health, and to investigate forces and forms of resistance and liberation. Presenters will discuss representations of death and dying in contemporary cultural production, juxtapose the emergence of oppressive narratives in the discourse of public health toward women, sexual minorities, and indigenous population, reflect on how regional histories form master narratives and how these narratives are incorporated in post-colonial studies, disability studies, narrative medicine, medical ethics, and cultural histories. The roundtables aim to foster interdisciplinary collaborations in the medical humanities and highlight regional histories of Eastern Europe, the Russian Far East, Tatarstan, and Alaska.

This roundtable discussion will focus on the representation of death in contemporary literature and cinema. The presenters will reflect on death as both a natural biological process and an aesthetic trope and explore its function in storytelling. Why is the depiction of death so attractive to artists and audiences? Is describing death an act of liberation for the author or the climax of the aesthetic horizon for the audience? Presenters will attempt to answer those questions in their talks about Parajanov's early films, Oksana Vasyakina's texts, post-Soviet horror films, and Yakhina’s novel Zuleikha and its screen version.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Elena Konstantinovna Murenina, East Carolina U

Roundtable Members

• Alexander Meienberger, U of St. Gallen (Switzerland)

• Nataliya E Rulyova, U of Birmingham (UK)

• Kate Tomashevskaya, U of Southern California