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Call for Papers - The Language of Illness and Pain: Identity,Communication and the Clinical EncounterSaturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd July 2011 Venue: Birkbeck College,University of London, United KingdomFollowing the establishment of the British medical profession in thenineteenth century, which endorsed the concept of medicine as a science,the clinical encounter between doctor and patient came to occupy acontested territory with equally contested boundaries. The period saw atheoretical and practical shift away from the classical perception ofmedicine as an art, based on the patient's story of his or her illness,to medicine as a science, based on the doctor's clinical observationsand supported by the rapid increase in technical training and newscientific procedures.Arguably the effect of this development was to suppress the patient'sidentity and voice. It also sidelined psychologically-driven theories,which were thought to lack evidence-based scientific rigour and wereregarded as inferior to biomedical practice. As a result, conditions andidentities associated with the troubled mind and with anti-socialbehaviours, for example, were pathologised to bring them into theprovince of orthodox treatments. The cure rate for the new taxonomies ofstigmatised identities and psychosomatic conditions was disappointing.Moreover there was considerable confusion at the interface between thedisciplines of law, medicine, psychology, and social science in relationto distinctions between normal behaviour and deviancy, between thecriminal and the patient, and between the mad and the bad.This multidisciplinary and trans-historical conference seeks to examinethe legacy of these trends through the analysis of communication andlanguage in the clinical encounter, as it is represented in medicine andin the humanities. The objective is to break down the artificialboundaries between the arts and biomedical science to identify mutuallybeneficial fields of enquiry. In particular the conference aims toestablish a forum in which academics, practitioners and students in themedical profession and in humanities can interrogate and evaluate theclinical encounter, the relationship between doctor and patient, and thelanguage of illness and pain. The intention is to publish a collectionof the best conference papers in a collection that will be of interestto the general reader but which can also be used by students andacademics in teaching and research.The conference is the result of the collaboration between MedicalHumanities at Birkbeck College, University of London and the Kent,Surrey and Sussex Medical Deanery. It takes part over two days -Saturday and Sunday 2nd-3rd July 2011. Refreshments and lunches areprovided and there will be a wine reception on Saturday, followed by ascreening of Wit, the American TV drama based on the PulitzerPrize-winning play by Margaret Edson, directed by Nike Nichols andstarring Emma Thompson. Formal presentations end at lunchtime on Sundayand will be followed in the afternoon by a talk at the British Museum inthe Wellcome Trust-sponsored Living and Dying Room.The conference will be supported by an exhibition, which will includebooks, music, and visual art, which explore representations of, and thecreative interaction between medicine and the humanities throughout theages.We invite proposals (300 words max) for 20-minute papers from academicsand practitioners in the fields of the humanities and medicine, whichexplore any aspect of communication, language, narrative, andrepresentation in relation to illness and pain. Proposals for panels ofthree speakers are welcome.The following list of ideas is intended as a guideline only:* Altered mental states* Collective illness, collective healing* Cultural perceptions of illness: gender, class, and ethnicity* Cure or healing?* Difference, otherness and pathologised identity* Identity and the 12-step programme* Illness, language and writing* Illness as metaphor* Illness and creativity / genius and madness* It's all in the mind* Medicine and anthropology* Medicine and music* Medicine and place: exteriors and interiors* Medicine and ritual* Medicine and visual culture* Narrative medicine and the clinical encounter* Narrative, identity and psychoanalysis* Narrative and the case history* The art of dying* The fictional doctor and patient* The medical autobiography / memoir* The Illness memoir* The language of pain* The language and lure of 'Bad Science'* The poetry of pain* Symbolic medicine: the staff of Asklepios and the caduceus of Hermes* Trauma and language* Western biomedicine and trans-cultural practices* Who owns the illness?Format: Given the interdisciplinary nature of the conference, we wouldlike papers to be accessible to all participants. If your proposal isaccepted we will ask you to provide a short handout in advance of theconference, which includes an abstract that sets out your key argumentsfollowed by brief definitions of terminology.CPD points for clinicians: Given the contribution the conference willmake to clinical practice, CPD credits may be claimed under yourindividual College guidelines.The deadline for proposals is 25th February. Please contact DebbieHarrison (d.harrison@bbk.ac.uk) and Jo Winning (j.winning@bbk.ac.uk). Wewould be delighted to discuss your ideas informally in advance.http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-research/conferences/the-language-of-illness-and-pain/call-for-papers