Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics program presents

A Montgomery Lecture:

Flash(y) Bioethics: Five-Minute Takes on Five Topics

Come join us for a fun introduction to our faculty and our field! Our MA students have come up with 5 topics for us explore in a pithy 5 minutes or less, providing a sampling of the diversity of issues engaged by the medical humanities and bioethics, and the breadth of the disciplinary approaches we bring to them. Here’s a preview of who will be there--the topics that will be explored.

Catherine Belling (Literature) READING

Katie Watson (Law) OATH

Megan Crowley-Matoka (Anthropology) TRUTH

Sarah Rodriguez (History) ALTERNATIVE

Tod Chambers (Religious Studies/Philosophy) REPRODUCTION

Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics program presents

A Montgomery Lecture

with

Mark Sheldon, PhD
Assistant Dean
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Northwestern University

Distinguished Senior Lecturer
Department of Philosophy
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Northwestern University

Faculty in the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Ethics Consult Service
Department of Religion, Health and Human Values
Rush University Medical Center
Chicago, Illinois

A Review From Past to Present:  Arguments Supporting Using Children as
Solid-Organ Donors

From the 1950’s, arguments have been put forward in defense of the claim that it is ethical to make use of children as organ donors. This talk will review these arguments and ones more recently put forward, as well.  This talk will argue that such attempts continue to be problematic.

Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics program presents

A Montgomery Lecture

with

Catherine Belling, PhD
Associate Professor, Medical Education

Faculty, Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program

Member, Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Going Under and Coming Round: Anesthesia and Illegibility

General anesthesia deliberately--and for very good reason--renders the patient unconscious so as to minimize the suffering caused by being sensate, awake, and alert during invasive medical procedures. The patient is also unable to generate communication--is rendered illegible. What does this mean in the context of the value we place on narrating illness experience, and on the role of memory and narration in cases of trauma? And what happens if a patient is not in fact entirely unconscious during the procedure?

Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics program presents

A Montgomery Lecture

with

Sarah Rodriguez, PhD
Faculty, Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program
Lecturer, Medical Education
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Lecturer, Global Health Studies
Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Northwestern University

Member, Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Katie Watson, JD
Associate Professor of Medical Social Sciences, Medical Education,
and Obstetrics & Gynecology
Faculty, Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program
Member, Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Catherine Belling, PhD
Associate Professor, Medical Education
Faculty, Medical Humanities & Bioethics Graduate Program
Member, Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Contextualizing The Handmaid’s Tale:  Historically, Legally, and Within Dystopia Fiction

Whether you have read the book or watch the series on Hulu, we invite you to follow up on Margaret Atwood’s campus visit by coming to a panel discussion with three professors from Feinberg's Medical Humanities and Bioethics MA faculty as they contextualize The Handmaid’s Tale historically (Sarah Rodriguez), within current and proposed laws regarding women and reproduction (Katie Watson), and consider its place within dystopia fiction (Catherine Belling).

Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics program
co-sponsored with IPHAM

presents

Andrew Lakoff, PhD
Professor of Sociology
Divisional Dean for Social Sciences
Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA

Ebola 2014 and the Administrative Imagination of Disease​

In the aftermath of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the World Health Organization was widely blamed for its slow initial response to the outbreak. According to many critics, the epidemic was a "preventable tragedy" that could be attributed to flaws in WHO leadership and its lack of sufficient resources. This talk offers a somewhat different interpretation: it suggests that a significant dimension of the failure was one of administrative imagination.  At a crucial stage in the outbreak, health authorities did not conceptualize Ebola as the potential source of a catastrophic epidemic, but rather understood it as a disease that could be managed via localized humanitarian care combined with straightforward public health techniques. In turn, the talk argues, the post-hoc diagnosis of administrative failure worked to assimilate Ebola into the more generic category of "global health emergency.”