Illness/Maladie

An international Word & Image Conference
Worcester, MA, 27-30 June 2005

Professor Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value for the Department of English, Harvard University, is our plenary speaker.

Her works include : The Body in Pain: the Making and Unmaking of the World , 1985; Dreaming by the Book, 1999; On Beauty and Being Just , 1999.

Plenary Address: "Among School Children": The Use of Body Damage to Express Physical Pain in Literature and the Arts

Pre-registration is mandatory (see relevant section of website).
Registered participants can pick up their conference folders at the Rehm Library, 3rd Floor Smith Hall.

20h00 Buffet Dinner/Buffet (Hogan Center)

All sessions will take place in the Rehm Library, 3rd Floor Smith Hall

Breakfast, coffee and lunch breaks

Continental Breakfasts will be available each morning before the start of the sessions.
Hot and cold drinks will provided at the back of the conference room.
Lunch can be purchased at the Hogan Campus Center.

Programme

Tuesday 28 June/mardi 28 juin

8h00 - 9h00 Continental Breakfast
Moran Lounge, 4th Floor Smith Hall

SESSION 1

Chair: Richard Matlak (College of The Holy Cross)

9h30 Sigrun Meinig (University of Bielefeld, Germany)
Out of Line: Aesthetics and Illness in Alan Hollinghurst and Henry James

10h00 Jean S. Mason (Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
Image, Word, Allegory and Story: The Tuberculosis Mural of Dr. Norman Bethune

COFFEE BREAK/PAUSE

10h45 April D. Marshall (Pepperdine University, CA)
Imagining Tubercular Beauty

11h15 William E. Stempsey, S.J, (College of the Holy Cross)
Spontaneous Human Combustion and Other Imaginary Maladies

12h00 LUNCH BREAK/PAUSE DÉJEUNER (Hogan Center)

SESSION 2

Chair: Patricia Bizzell (College of the Holy Cross)

14h00 Sara R. Danger (Valparaiso University, Indiana, USA)
Embodying Conflict: The Visual Contexts Of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

14h30 Lars Elleström (Växjö University, Sweden)
Psychosomatic Illness and Grotesque Bodies in Late Nineteenth-Century Narrative Fiction

COFFEE BREAK/PAUSE

15h15 Zoe Trodd (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA )
A Relative and Proper Order: Death and Illness in the Photography of the American Civil War

15h45 Ann Henley (North Carolina State University, NC) "Spotted Death":  Smallpox and Images of Women in Three Literary Texts

20h00 DINNER: American BBQ

Wednesday 29 June/mercredi 29 juin

8h00 - 9h00 Continental Breakfast
Moran Lounge, 4th Floor Smith Hall

SESSION 3

Chair : Helen Whall (College of the Holy Cross)

9h30 Ellen Kirschner (Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina)
Breast Cancer Self-Portrait: Representations in Image and Word

10h00 Susan Bell (Bowdoin College, Maine, USA) & Alan Radley (Loughborough University, UK)
Art, breast cancer and the culture of illness

12h00 LUNCH BREAK/PAUSE DÉJEUNER (Hogan Center)

SESSION 4

Chair : Thomas Worcester, S.J. (College of the Holy Cross)

13h30 Melissa R. Katz (Brown University, Rhode Island)
Preventative Medicine: Josse Lieferinxe’s Retable Altar of St. Sebastian as a Defense against Plague in 15th - century Provence

14h00 Thomas Worcester, S.J. (College of the Holy Cross) & Pamela Jones (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
Hope and Healing: Painting in Italy in a Time of Plague, 1500-1800

COFFEE BREAK/PAUSE

15h00 PLENARY SESSION
Elaine Scarry, Harvard University
"Among School Children”: The Use of Body Damage to Express Physical Pain in Literature and the Arts.

16h30 Bus to Worcester Art Museum (WAM)

17h00 – 19h00 WAM Exhibit/Gallery Talk & Reception

Thursday 30 June/jeudi 30 juin

8h00 - 9h00 Continental Breakfast
Moran Lounge, 4th Floor Smith Hall

SESSION 5

Chair: Frédéric Ogée, Université Paris 7 – Denis Diderot

9h30 Patricia Donatien-Yssa (Université des Antilles et de la Guyane) Iconographie et représentations de la blès une maladie coloniale

10h00 Paul Beavitt (University of Leicester, Leicester, UK)
Melanau Sickness Images, Spirits given Physical Form

COFFEE BREAK/PAUSE

10h45 Peter Wagner (Anglistik, Universität Koblenz-Landau)
The Verbal and Visual Background of Illness in Hogarth’s Graphic Art

11h15 Sophie Vasset, (Universite Paris 7 Denis-Diderot, Paris, France )
Destroying to Cure: The representation of treatment in Eighteenth Century medical treatises

12h00 LUNCH BREAK/PAUSE DÉJEUNER (Hogan Center)

SESSION 6

Chair: Maurice A. Géracht (College of the Holy Cross)

14h00 Harold Schweizer (Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA)
Aesthetic and Ethical Dimensions in Hodler’s Paintings of the Dying Valentine Godé Darel  

14h30 David Roche (Université Stendhal, Grenoble III)
Disease and Anti-Naturalism in the Works of Raymond Carver and David Lynch

15h00 Dirk Visser (University of Groningen, the Netherlands)
Plagued for their Offence: AIDS and Theatrical Representation

Closing Remarks: Frédéric Ogée/Maurice A. Géracht