Gender and Genre: Medical Humanities and the Moving Image

My film, As You Were was presented by Fiona Johnstone in her paper: Labour as Labour: reading pregnancy and birth as professional practice in Lyndsay Mann’s As You Were.

An exciting one-day symposium at Durham University celebrating the latest work on moving images in the Medical Humanities.

Hosted jointly by the Narrative Practices Lab and the Visual and Material Lab in Durham University’s Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities and Linköping University’s Division of Gender Studies, Department of Thematic Studies, the day will be themed around the intersection of genre and gender, exploring ideas at the cutting edge of Literary Studies, Art History and Visual Studies, Film Studies, Critical Theory, Feminist Philosophy, Queer and Trans Theory, and Medical Humanities. We invite presentations on any aspect of the moving image: from visual social media content to moving image artworks to film and television, and anything in between or beyond.

We look forward to exploring how gender and genre are co-constituted, and how their inter-relations shapes ideas and experiences of health and illness. We hope to hear about how the visual and the narrative inter-relate, how genre can both limit and enable the depiction of experiences of illness, and how stories, visual forms, physical experiences, and aesthetic modes can be gendered, and can shape our experiences of gender. The day will explore the moving image as method in the medical humanities, foregrounding the ways that the visual can open up what it’s possible to know, to experience, to express. The symposium brings together themes of embodiment, power, art, story, meaning, knowledge, and history to tie conceptual questions about the nature and politics of visual representation to tangible examples in our lives, our bodies, and our experiences of illness and disability.

The day will bring together scholars from a range of disciplines, offering opportunities for connection and the possibility of future collaboration. We look forward to exploring together the future of the moving image in Medical Humanities, and to considering new horizons for this field of work.

The panels will be as follows:

Panel 1

Supernatural Horror, Illness, and Narrative Practices Edyta Just

Involuntary childlessness and reframing failure in gynaehorror Sally Campbell

The Hybrid Artistic Nudes of the Frankensteinian ‘Mad Scientists’: Organ Transplantation and Gender Performativity in contemporary cinema Sara Damiani

Missed Periods: Abortion Access, Bodies, and Cinematographic Uses of the Past in Period DramaMelissa Oliver-Powell

Panel 2

Voicing ObjectsOlivia Turner

Fluid Borders: Creative Collaboration and Collective Care in Moving Image Practice Emily Beaney

Genrecripping human/non-human collaborations: the role of queerness and disability in Abi Palmer Invents the WeatherCat Chong

Labour as Labour: reading pregnancy and birth as professional practice in Lyndsay Mann’s As You Were Fiona Johnstone

Panel 3

Genre and Gender in Representations of Dementia in Contemporary CinemaMalgorzata Bugaj

Hair Loss, Gendered Trauma, and the Politics of Representation: A Feminist Analysis of Cancer Narratives in Malayalam CinemaAnjana Menon

The New Good Doctor: White Masculinity and the Post-Obamacare Medical DramaKristen Loutensock

Moving Slowly: Drawing Attention to Slow Violence in the Domestic Everyday in BhopalLynn Wray

Uncertain Surfaces: Running, Writing, Experimental Filmmaking and Parkinson’s Janice Howard

Panel 4

Letters from the “brain hospital”: visualizing illness in Lotta Petronella’s film Själö: Island of SoulsMarta Cenedese

Visual representations of diet culture and generational conflict in the #almondmom trend on TikTokHester Hockin-Boyers

Male Mental Health and Suicide in Contemporary Drama Film – Christina Wilkins

“I’m telling you, it actually happened”: Madness, Unreal Realism & Speculative TVThe Mad Feeling Collective

The symposium is convened by the Narrative Practices Lab co-led by Veronica Heney, the Visual and Material Lab led by Fiona Johnstone, and Edyta Just from Linköping University.

This event is free to attend.

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As You Were (2024)