History of Nursing meetings & conferences

Society for the Social History of Medicine 2014 Conference

Disease, Health and the State

10-12 July 2014 Oxford, United Kingdom

The Centre for Health, Medicine and Society: Past and Present, Oxford Brookes University and the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford

The Society for the Social History of Medicine hosts a major, biennial, international, and interdisciplinary conference. In 2014 it will explore the relationships between health, disease, and the state. Responses to disease and concerns about health contributed to the development of the state, yet disease and medicine have also challenged and disrupted state authority. The biennial conference is not exclusive in terms of its theme, and reflects the broad diversity of the discipline of the social history of medicine.

Conference Organizers: Dr Katherine Watson, Dr Erica Charters

‘Attentive Writers’: Healthcare, Authorship, and Authority

Medical Humanities Research Centre, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom 23-25 August 2013

Conference Committee: Dr. David Shuttleton, Dr. Gavin Miller, Dr. Elizabeth Reeder, and Dr. Megan Coyer

From nurses, physicians and surgeons to administrators, caregivers, technicians, veterinarians and voluntary sector workers, this conference adopts the term ‘attentive writers’ as evocative of the multitude of both non-professional and professional caregivers – clinical and non-clinical healthcare workers – whose attention to illness might take narrative form. The study of physician-writers was one of the earliest developments in the related fields of Literature and Medicine and the Medical Humanities, with canonical figures such as Conan Doyle, Goldsmith, Keats, Smollett, and William Carlos Williams, receiving much-deserved critical attention. Echoing Rita Charon’s concept of ’attentiveness’, this conference brings this established field of enquiry regarding ‘the physician as writer’ into dialogue with recent calls for a more inclusive approach to the Medical Humanities (i.e. ‘Health Humanities’) and questions the authoritative place of the Western – traditionally male – physician in our explorations of the humanities/health interface.

The relationship between healthcare, authorship and authority will be addressed through three inter-related strands  of thematic enquiry: (1) an historical and literary examination of ‘attentive writers’; (2) a more devolved interrogation of the field of Narrative Medicine; and (3) an examination of ‘attentive writing’ as creative practice.

Any queries may be directed to: megan.coyer@glasgow.ac.uk

American Association for the History of Nursing Thirtieth Annual History of Nursing Conference

Cleveland, Ohio September 26-29, 2013

The American Association for the History of Nursing and the Cleveland Clinic, are co-sponsoring the Association’s thirtieth annual conference to be held in Cleveland, Ohio. The conference provides a forum for researchers interested in sharing new research that addresses events, issues, and topics pertinent to the history of the global nursing profession, its clinical practice, and the field of nursing history. Individual papers, posters, and panel presentations are featured at the conference. Additional information about AAHN and the conference can be obtained at www.aahn.org.