MSH: “Medical Humanities and Literature”. Attending seminars and visiting the medical humanities research groupe “Résistances” in Paris.

Project summary

The project “Medical humanities and Literature” is a working title for a book on 12 major diseases/diagnosisis. I am studying several literary works (novels, plays, poems) that describes the experience with cancer, aids, heart diseases, l epra, hysteria, depression, tuberculosis, syphilis, to mention a few well known diseases. The idea is to analyse the literary text, confront it with medical knowledge, and let the text open for reflections on the non-medical, literary and artistic imagina tions and understandings of the phenomenon of illness.

My academic interests and research during the last years has been in the

field called “Medical humanities”. I have been directing a research project at the University of Oslo, named “INFECTIO: the text, the pain and the sign”, which was a cross-disiplinary project supported by the Research Council of Norway, and involving several Norwegian and foreign scholars.

The research in medical humanities in France is prolific and productive,

and now I hav e recieved a very kind invitation form dr. med/dr. ès lettres M. Gérard Danou at the Paris-Didérot University, to participate in the activities of the research group “Résistances” in Paris from May 16th to June 13th, that is, for four weeks.