Poems, Prose, and Panels:
The Work of the Humanities in End of Life Care
September 30, 2017 9:30-1:30, Rubenstein 153.
Featuring
MK Czerwiec – Graphic Medicine: Comics, Care, and End of Life
Scott Janssen – Poetry in Three Dimensions
Jehanne Gheith – ‘Can You Get Me Home?’:
Animals and Novels as Guides at the End of Life
Sponsored by Humanities Futures; Slavic and Eurasian Studies.
The room will be open from 9:00 on with coffee and snacks served. Lunch will be served, please RSVP by September 23 to Rachel Borczuk (Rachel.Borczuk@duke.edu) if you want a lunch. The three bios of the three presenters can be found below along with their presentation titles. It is anticipated that this workshop/presentation will be interactive.
Graphic Medicine: Comics, Care, and End of Life
In this presentation, MK will describe the nascent field of Graphic Medicine and discuss several of its most relevant applications, specifically in the area of end-of-life care. Participants will have the opportunity to implement some practices of Graphic Medicine. No comic drawing or reading experience needed!
MK Czerwiec (pronounced sir-wick) is a nurse who has been making comics since 2000. Her clinical work is in HIV/AIDS care and hospice care. She is the artist in residence at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine and a Senior Fellow of the George Washington School of Nursing Center for Health Policy and Media. She is a co-author of the Graphic Medicine Manifesto and author/artist of Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371. You can learn more about her work at www.comicnurse.com.
Poetry in Three Dimensions
Using stories, reflections and poems, the uses of poetry at the end of life will be explored along three dimensions. These include poetry as a metaphor for the therapeutic relationship between hospice counselor and patient; as a source of insight, perspective and self-expression for patients and their families; and the uses of poetry for personal growth, processing and storytelling among helping professionals.
Scott Janssen has been a hospice social worker for twenty-five years. An Editorial Advisor for the magazine Social Work Today, he has published widely in the areas of hospice care, psychological trauma, and clinical social work practice. Before becoming a social worker he earned an MA in American history. His book Standing at Lemhi Pass – Archetypal Stories for the End of Life and Other Challenging Times blends the humanities with clinical care to explore the use of storytelling with terminally ill patients and their families. He also writes fiction including the novel Lightkeepers, a metaphysical adventure set in the aftermath of the Civil War. He works for Hospice and Palliative Care Center of Alamance-Caswell and can be reached at scott@hospiceac.org
‘Can You Get Me Home?’: Animals and Novels as Guides through Trauma (or End of Life)
In my clinical work, both in hospice and in private practice, I have found that the relationship between people and other animals is very strong, particularly when there has been a trauma and at the end of life. The paper explores how Lydia Zinov’eva Annibal’s novel The Tragic Menagerie helps us understand this human-animal connection in a rich and complex way that can benefit patients, clients, and caregivers.
Jehanne Gheith is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) and tenured professor in Russian literature and in the Program in Education, teaching courses on Medical Ethics and End of life care. As an LCSW, she has worked for Duke Hospice and Bereavement Services and currently has a small private practice in psychotherapy focusing on trauma, grief, and pet loss. Despite or because of all that, she enjoys life quite a lot. Her published works include: Finding the Middle Ground, "The Superfluous Woman," and, coedited with Katherine Jolluck, Gulag Voices (the first book of interviews with Gulag survivors to be published in English). gheith@duke.edu
