Postcolonial Health: Global Perspectives on the Medical Humanities
- Date: Thursday 20 June 2019, 09:00 – 17:00
- Location: Weetwood Hall
- Interval: Every day
- Until: Friday 21 June 2019
- Cost: Free
A conference focusing on the relationship between colonialism, its aftermath and the impact on human health.
Keynote speakers:
Professor Deepika Bahri, Professor of English, Emory University, author of Postcolonial Biology: Psyche and Flesh After Empire (2017)
Professor Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Professor in the History of Medicine, Director of the Centre for Global Health Histories, and Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Global Health Histories, University of York
European colonialism has had direct, immediate and obvious impacts on human health, from the spread of disease upon contact to the effects of environmental damage, as well as the incalculable trauma produced by colonial violence and dispossession. Ongoing conditions of colonisation for the indigenous inhabitants of settler states continue to produce huge health disparities, while recent developments in epigenetics have provided scientific explanations for what many colonised subjects already know: that social and cultural oppression can have somatic effects and that these are heritable, potentially affecting future generations.
In this conference we seek to think critically about the complex and multiple relationships between colonialism, its aftermath, and human health, and to extend dialogues between postcolonial studies and the medical humanities (and related biocultural fields). In recent years we have seen frequent calls to ‘decolonise’ biomedicine, the life sciences, and the health humanities, and we welcome papers that engage with this process by asking: what might such a decolonisation mean for health research and medical practice? How can postcolonial studies contribute to more equitable health futures?
This conference is funded by a Wellcome Trust Seed Award. Attendance is free and catering will be provided for all delegates. Booking is now open via Eventbrite.
Programme
Thursday 20th June
08:30-09.45 Registration and coffee
09:45-11:00 Keynote Lecture - Sanjoy Bhattacharya, University of York
‘Global Health Histories, Humanities and the Profitabilities of Culturing Transparency and Empowerment’
11:00-11:30 Coffee break
11:30-13:00 Panel sessions
1.1 Indigenous Trauma and Mental Health Text
Chair: Emily Timms, University of Leeds
Amy Rushton, Nottingham Trent University
“Indian Sick”: Mental Distress, Healing, Memoir
Anna Kemball, University of Edinburgh
Healing and Recovery in Residential School and Stolen Generation Narratives
Abdenour Bouich, University of Exeter
Indigenous Trauma, (Post)colonial Survivance in Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse (2012)
1.2 Adolescence and Sexual Healthitle Text
Manjari Nandy, Central University of Gujarat
Medicalising Sex Education Programme: A Post-Colonial Effect?
Stanley Wanjala, Tilberg University
HIV Disclosure Practices and Stigma: The Perspective of Infected Adolescents in Coastal Kenya
Mobolanle Ebunoluwa Sotunsa, Babcock University
The Utilization of Yoruba Talking Drum Performance in HIV/AIDS Prevention Among Nigerian Adolescents
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:30 Panel sessions
2.1 Women’s Health, Women’s Voices e Text
Chair: Mobolanle Ebunoluwa Sotunsa, Babcock University
Anna Adima, University of York
The Sound of Silence: The 1929-31 Kikuyu Female Circumcision Controversy and the Discursive Suppression of African Women’s Voices
Rebecca Macklin, University of Leeds
Natural Violence, Unnatural Bodies: Animacy Hierarchies in Narratives of Violence against Indigenous Women
Emily Kate Timms, University of Leeds
‘This isn’t Africa’: Ageing, Care, and Intergenerational Trauma in Caribbean Women’s Writing
2.2 Soldiers, Veterans, Race and Disability Text
Chair: Alexia Moncrieff, University of Leeds
Michelle Jarman, University of Wyoming
Racial Erasure and Rehabilitation in the Great War
Samraghni Bonnerjee, University of Sheffield
‘No Nurses for Indians’: Cultural Contamination and Segregation in the Medical Treatment of Indian Soldiers during the First World War
Abir Hamdar, Durham University
The Living Martyr: Disability and Conflict in Arab Visual and Media Culture
15:30-16:00 Coffee break
16:00-17:30 Panel sessions
3.1 Bodies, Minds, and Literary Form
Chair: Samraghni Bonnerjee, University of Sheffield
Dominic Davies, City, University of London
Decomposing Fictions of Occupied Baghdad: Body Parts and Body Politics in Hassan Blasim’s ‘The Corpse Exhibition’ and Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad
Lucía López Serrano, University of Salamanca
The Medical Establishment and the Marginal Body in Nalo Hopkinson’s Speculative Fictions: Examining Brown Girl in the Ring and ‘A Habit of Waste’
Ruby Srivastava, King’s College London
Representations of Mental Health Amongst Indian Women in Late Colonial and Postcolonial Fiction and Life Writing
3.2 Security and Citizenship
Chair: Amy Rushton, Nottingham Trent University
Tarek Younis, University College London
Psychopathologising Dissent with Resilience: Global Mental Health in the Global War on Terror
Jieun Kim, University of Leeds
Between Nationhood and Global Citizenship: Promoting Blood Donation in Postcolonial South Korea
Sola Owonibi, Adekunle Ajasin University
Insecurity and Literary Imagination in Africa: Construing the Arab Spring as Socio-Political Illness in Hisham Matar’s In The Country Of Men
19:00 Conference dinner
Friday 21st June
09.45-11.00 Keynote lecture - Deepika Bahri, Emory University ‘Biocolonialism 2.0’
11:00-11:30 Coffee break
11.30 - 13:00 Panel sessions
4.1 Medical Institutions and Pedagogy
Chair: Branwyn Poleykett, University of Exeter
Sandhya Shetty, University of New Hampshire
Anatomy Without Borders: Recasting Colonial Medicine
Shelley Angelie Saggar, Science Museum
Collecting the World: The Colonial Inheritance of Henry Wellcome’s Medical Collections
Susannah M. Boyed, Franca Keicher, Ramón Martinez and Zahra H. Khan, Columbia University
That Makes Me Uncomfortable: Disrupting the Health Humanities with a Pedagogy of Discomfort
4.2 Disability and Stigmatisation
Chair: Arthur Rose, University of Bristol
Yvonne Wechuli, University of Cologne
Disability and Postcolonial Studies: Common Ground, Missing Links and Mutual Inspiration
Rimjhim Bhattacherjee, Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata
Corporealising Resistance: Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People and Global Disability Discourses
Ndubuisi Martins Aniemeka, University of Ibadan
Strength in Weakness: Representations of Sickler’s Forte against Illness and Stigmatisation in Yinka Egbokhare’s Dazzling Mirage
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14.00-15:30 Panel sessions
5.1 Culture-Bound Conditions? Myths and Monstrosity
Chair: Yvonne Wechuli, University of Cologne
Tobias Schlosser, Independent Scholar
A Culture-Bound Psychosis? (Re)Conceptualising the Windigo in Native Canadian Culture
Alex Henry, University of Leeds
‘Go Home’: Female Illness, ‘Monstrosity’ and White Appetite in Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching
Arya Thampuran, Durham University
Medicine or Myth? Decolonising Traumatic Testimony in Contemporary African Literature
5.2 Decolonising Disease
Chair: Frances Hemsley, University of Bristol
Branwyn Poleykett, University of Exeter
Commoning, Care and Decolonisation: Responding to Chronic Disease in Dakar
Edna Bonhomme, Max Planck Institute for History of Science
Epidemics in the Time of War
Arthur Rose, University of Bristol
Literary Tobacco Relations in the Age of Planetary Health