A fine ear for messiness and contradictions: Literariness at work in interdisciplinary collaboration

A ‘fine ear for messiness and contradictions’: ‘Literariness’ at work in interdisciplinary collaboration
Abstract
Over the last ten years, the UK has seen a sharp increase in the number of intellectually ambitious, humanities-led research investigations of health and human experience. These projects have both responded to and helped define a ‘critical’ turn in medical humanities characterised by more ‘entangled’ and experimental ways of working. In my roles as Co-Director of Hearing the Voice (a large, interdisciplinary study of voice-hearing based at Durham University from 2012-2022), Director of the UK’s Institute for Medical Humanities, and collaborator and advisor to other research teams, I have become fascinated by the way projects in our field imagine, actualise and value the contributions of particular disciplines. This talk will share findings of an interview study Dr Jamie Rákóczi and I conducted with literary studies academics who had worked on two or more critical medical humanities projects. What happens to literature, literariness, the literary text, and the literary scholar as they get caught up in collaborative, interdisciplinary, critical, and health-related projects? What are the theories of literature and of interdisciplinarity that emerge-not in abstraction, contemplation, or op-ed rhetoric but on the ground: in negotiation with funders, colleagues, managers, clinical and community collaborators? This talk will, I hope, be an invitation to wider discussion of some of the specific challenges and critical potential of research in and beyond the critical medical humanities.
About the speaker
Angela Woods
Professor of Medical Humanities
Department of English Studies, Durham University
IMC Tuesday Seminar held June 13th, 2023.
Note: Talk is trimmed to ensure anonymity of informants.