Medical Encounters is a 2021-22 series of events and course offered at the University of Southern Mississippi sponsored by the School of Interdisciplinary Studies and underwritten by the Southern Miss Fund for Academic Excellence.
This series focuses on the sites of tension, and even breakdown, between patient and provider. We will examine moments when the goals of a physician are at odds with the goals of the person they are treating; moments when communication is insufficient and neither party can understand one another; moments when healthcare fails to provide care, and even harms the patient. We are especially interested in the conceptual gaps, structural challenges, and biases that complicate medical encounters.
Beyond diagnosing the problems, though, we will initiate conversations that may help us to envision solutions. How can patients and practitioners learn to listen better to one another? In what ways might our concepts of “health,” “illness,” and “disability” require revision? How can we address the ways that systemic inequalities shape medical encounters? How can the arts be a site of resistance against the problems of medical encounters, and how can the arts enable us to imagine better ways of providing care?
Series Components
Roundtable (Oct 13) Resilience, Healing, and Moving Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic
Panel (Nov 10) From the Rise of Modern Medicine to COVID
Course (Spring ’22) Bioethics, Pandemics, and the Public Sphere
Faculty Team
Dr. Kathryn Anthony
Associate Professor of Communications
School of Communications
Dr. Ian Dunkle
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
School of Humanities
ianddunkle.hcommons-staging.org
Dr. Michelle McLeese
Assistant Teaching Professor of Sociology
School of Social Science and Global Studies
Dr. Emily Stanback
Associate Professor of English
School of Humanities
Student Liaison
Brooklynn Smith, Biomedical Sciences major
Image Credit: Daniel Capilla, Nurse graffiti COVID-19 in Málaga, Spain, on the south wall that delimits the property of San José, CC BY-SA 4.0.
