Description:

Catherine Belling, PhD
Associate Professor
Medical Humanities & Bioethics
Northwestern University

The President’s Glands: Biofiction and the Containment of JFK’s Autoimmune Disease

American Adulterer is a 2009 novel by British physician Jed Mercurio. It narrates the Kennedy presidency as a clinical case, attributing historical-biographical events—including the president’s election, his actions during the Cuban missile crisis, and his marital infidelities—to the biomedical effects and treatment of Addison’s Disease. This talk will raise questions about the relationship between biology and biography in this strange novel, and what it might tell us about how literary fiction and medical evidence can interact in producing the public image of historical and political figures.