A creative writing workshop with the title 'Narrative Medicine: The Power of Creative Writing in a Time of Crisis' will take place on Friday December 4th, 2020, with the participation of Vinia Dakari (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Lynne Bamat Mijangos (Columbia University), and Catherine Rogers (Columbia University). The workshop will be held between 18:30-20:30 via the ZOOM platform.
Language of the workshop: English.
**A certificate of attendance will be provided**
In order to ensure your online participation in the event, please fill in the form available here.
There are certain online spaces available.
This event is organized by the Creative Workshop Series 'Transparent Windows' (School of English, AUTh).
Event Coordinator: Dr. Tatiani Rapatzikou (trapatz@enl.auth.gr)
For any further inquiries, do send your emails to: trapatz@enl.auth.gr (Tatiani Rapatzikou) and svergopo@enl.auth.gr (Stavroula Vergopoulou)
ΕVENT ABSTRACT
There is a global pandemic. Suddenly we creative writers find ourselves living in a medicalized world. We go out wearing masks; we study headlines about virus; our conversation turns to hospitals and doctors. We show care for others, paradoxically, by sanitizing our hands and keeping our distance. This uncertainty, disruption, and disconnection has brought to the fore the importance of the arts and of creative writing in particular. What is the role and responsibility of the creative writer with the world in such crisis?
Narrative Medicine is a fresh discipline that brings clinical practitioners and health care professionals into conversation with narrative scholars and creative writers to metabolize, interpret, be moved by, and act upon the stories of illness. Now, more than ever, the narrative power of Narrative Medicine has become critical to our dismembered society.
Join us in employing the power of language and the energy of creativity in a specially designed narrative medicine program. Together in guided exercises we will each create new work in three genres; poetry, fiction, and drama. The workshop invites beginning and experienced writers alike to enter into this reparative process. Your creative work is essential as--side by side with doctors and healthcare workers--we work to restore both social and personal equilibrium.
BIO INFORMATION
Vinia Dakari, PhD, has taught courses in Anglophone Theatre and American Literature and Culture as Adjunct Lecturer at the Department of English Language and Literature, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, as well as the School of English, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is also a Postdoctoral Fellow, exploring the aesthetic aspects of the unpresentability of cancer in performance and its impact on spectators (School of English, AUTh). She is the Greek Representative for the Arts Health Early Career Research Network (ECRN) as well as Research Associate of the Hellenic Cancer Society’s Centre for Support, Education and Research in Psychosocial Oncology, Athens. She has co-edited the “Medicine and/in Theatre” issue of Critical Stages/Scènes Critiques, the online journal of the International Association of Theatre Critics. As a Narrative Medicine facilitator, she offers sessions in Greek in collaboration with Columbia University’s Narrative Medicine Faculty.
Lynne Bamat Mijangos, RN, MSW, MFA, MS, is a nurse and social worker who teaches online for Narrative Medicine’s Certificate of Professional Achievement program, and facilitates close reading and reflective writing workshops in New York City hospitals with Geriatric/Palliative Care, Family Medicine, Maternal/Fetal Care, Neonatal Intensive Care, Pediatrics, and Psychology/Psychiatry departments. Since March 2020 she has been co-facilitating weekly Narrative Medicine live virtual sessions for international groups. She is the author of the chapbook Baby Girl Mijangos (2002) and “Listening for the Voices of Women: A Close Reading of On Being Ill” (2016). She is a contributor to and co-editor of Narrative in Social Work Practice: The Power and Possibility of Story (2017).
Catherine Rogers, MFA, MS, is Associate Director and Lecturer in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University and a consultant/facilitator with hospitals and universities throughout the US. In collaboration with Tatiani Rapatzikou, PhD, Catherine was a Fulbright scholar at the Aristotle University schools of English and Medicine and the University of Athens (2009, 2013) as well as American Embassy American Corners tour lecturer (2010). With Vinia Dakari, she co-facilitates the first ever Greek language sessions and co-edited “Medicine and/in Theatre” Critical Stages/Scènes Critiques. In cooperation with House of Literature Paros (2009), Anatolia College (2009), Writers House Rhodos (2016), the Hellenic Association of American Studies (HELAAS), Poets House Nea Ionia (2013-2019), the Athens Centre, and the biennial Well-MED Conferences in Clinicians Well-Being (2014-2020), Catherine continues to develop and strengthen ties between the US and Greece in creative writing and Narrative Medicine. A playwright and performer, Catherine most recently appeared in Theatre Complicité’s Everything That Rises Must Dance (London 2017, 2018) and most recently published in Gettysburg Review (2014), Ex-Centric Narratives (2017), and TDR/The Drama Review (2020).
