Health, Loss, and the Biopolitical Distribution of Affect

October 27, 2017
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This panel from the Health Humanities & Social Justice Breath, Body, Voice Conference at Duke University dealt with health, the loss of health, and the biopolitical distribution of affect. The participants in this discussion included Prof. Christina Crosby, a survivor of a bicycle accident that left her quadriplegic where, after physical therapy, she become paraplegic. She is the author of “A Body, Undone,” that chronicled her journey from full health before her accident towards a place of healing afterwards. Participants also included Dr. Colby Reid, who is the Chair of Fashion Studies at Columbia College Chicago. She is currently working on two co-authored book projects, “Posthuman Television” and “Fallen Angel: The Consumption of Religion in American Cocktail Culture”; along with Assoc. Prof. Cristobal Silva of the English and Comparative Literature department at Columbia University. He is also an editor of “The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation,” as well as the author of “Miraculous Plagues: An Epidemiology of Early New England Narrative,” (Oxford, 2011). The conference was a culminating event of the 2014-2017 Mellon-sponsored Humanities Futures initiative at the Franklin Humanities Institute. Humanities Futures explores future strategies and directions of humanities, arts, and interpretive social science departments following more than two decades of interdisciplinary change and expansion. This capstone conference focused on the interdisciplinary interface between the humanities, social justice, and health, whether in the health sciences, clinical environments, or the lived experience of states of health.