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 will 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—and here are the topics to be explored.

Catherine Belling (Literature) ABSOLUTE 

Katie Watson (Law) CONSCIENCE 

Megan Crowley-Matoka (Anthropology) GUILT

Sarah Rodriguez (History) MEMORIES 

Tod Chambers (Religion) HUMOR 

This lecture will be held in person for Northwestern students, faculty, and staff—in the Searle Seminar Room in the Lurie Research Building (303 E Superior). Chicago Campus. For those outside the Northwestern community and anyone who would prefer to attend remotely, the Zoom option will continue to be available.

** PLEASE REGISTER TO RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK**
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Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program

Presents

A Montgomery Lecture

With

Preya S. Tarsney, JD, HEC-C
Director, Donnelley Ethics Program
Shirley Ryan AbilityLab
Assistant Professor, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

The Case Against AMA (Against Medical Advice) Discharges
This lecture will examine the ethical arguments against handling refusals of medical treatment and care plans that lead to discharge as AMA or “Against Medical Advice Discharges”. Drawing from challenging cases from the inpatient rehabilitation setting, we will discuss the merits and drawbacks of this AMA framework compared with alternate options for handling refusals that lead to earlier than anticipated discharges from an inpatient setting. We will also examine various ethical tensions that arise when addressing these refusals, as well as potential strategies to mitigate harm and honor dignity of risk.

This lecture will be held in person for Northwestern students, faculty, and staff—in the Searle Seminar Room in the Lurie Research Building (303 E Superior). Chicago Campus. For those outside the Northwestern community and anyone who would prefer to attend remotely, the Zoom option will continue to be available.

** PLEASE REGISTER TO RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK**
click here to REGISTER

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Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program

Presents

A Montgomery Lecture

With

Rebecca Seligman, PhD
Associate Professor, Anthropology and Global Health
Associate Chair, Department of Anthropology
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University

From Sensations to Symptoms:
The Social Shaping of Functional Illness Experience
Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), otherwise known as Conversion Disorder and once known as hysteria, is characterized by abnormal sensory or motor symptoms that are determined to be “incompatible” with neurological disease. FND patients are a challenge for contemporary medicine. They experience high levels of distress, disability, and social isolation, yet a large proportion of those treated do not get better. Patients with FNDs are often misdiagnosed and suffer from stigma, dysfunctional medical encounters and scarcity of adequate treatments. I argue that medicine’s struggle with FNDs is itself a symptom of a biomedical ontology that constrains the medical imagination, impedes understanding of mind-body processes and constrains what is understood to be possible, real, and treatable.  In this talk, I use a cross-culturally and historically situated comparative approach in order to propose a framework for better understanding mind-body processes.  In particular, I examine the work of 2 main, interconnected factors: 1) cultural expectancies that shape the meanings of sensations and the process through which symptoms come into being; and 2) the social scaffolding of such expectancies and exposures.  I draw on ongoing research with people living with FND to suggest ways in which to integrate such understandings into clinical care.

This lecture will be held in person for Northwestern students, faculty, and staff—in the Searle Seminar Room in the Lurie Research Building (303 E Superior). Chicago Campus. For those outside the Northwestern community and anyone who would prefer to attend remotely, the Zoom option will continue to be available.

** PLEASE REGISTER TO RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK**
click here to REGISTER

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Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program

Presents

A Montgomery Lecture

With

Jeremy A. Greene, MD, PhD
William H. Welch Professor of Medicine and the History of Medicine
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Author, The Doctor Who Wasn’t There: Technology, History, and the Limits of Telehealth (University of Chicago, 2022)

The Doctor Who Wasn’t There:
Technology, History, and the Limits of Telehealth

The Doctor Who Wasn’t There, published this month by the University of Chicago Press, traces the long arc of enthusiasm for—and skepticism of—electronic media in health and medicine. Over the past century, a series of new technologies promised to democratize access to healthcare. From the humble telephone to the connected smartphone, from FM radio to wireless wearables, from cable television to the “electronic brains” of networked mainframe computers: each new platform has promised a radical reformation of the healthcare landscape. With equal attention to the history of technology, the history of medicine, and the politics and economies of American healthcare, physician and historian, Dr. Greene, explores the role that electronic media play, for better and for worse, in the past, present, and future of our health.

This lecture will be held in person for Northwestern students, faculty, and staff—in the Searle Seminar Room in the Lurie Research Building (303 E Superior). Chicago Campus. For those outside the Northwestern community and anyone who would prefer to attend remotely, the Zoom option will continue to be available.

** PLEASE REGISTER TO RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK**
click here to REGISTER

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Description:

The Master of Arts in Medical Humanities & Bioethics Program

Presents

A Montgomery Lecture

With

Richard J. Miller, PhD 
Emeritus, Alfred Newton Richards Professor 
of Pharmacology 
Northwestern University 
Feinberg School of Medicine 

The Rise and Fall of Animal Experimentation: 
Empathy, Science, and the Future of Research 

Professor Miller will review aspects of his new book which concerns the history of the use of animals in biomedical research; the history of the movement that opposes these studies; whether animal research is really effective and under what conditions; whether animal research is ethical, and new scientific paradigms that are rapidly making animal based research obsolete as we enter the new era of anthropocentric experimentation.

This lecture will be held in person for Northwestern students, faculty, and staff—in the Searle Seminar Room in the Lurie Research Building (303 E Superior). Chicago Campus. For those outside the Northwestern community and anyone who would prefer to attend remotely, the Zoom option will continue to be available.

** PLEASE REGISTER TO RECEIVE THE ZOOM LINK**
REGISTER HERE

Read more about this series | Sign up for lecture announcements