Dichen Lachman and Adam Scott in Severance, Season 2, Episode 7 (“Chikhai Bardo”), Streaming on AppleTV+. In the top image, the pre-severed Scouts talk shop while grading papers; in the lower image, Gemma writes thank-you notes in an eternal Christmas scenario. The AppleTV+ show Severance, which explores the lived reality of people who work…
Author: Rebecca M. Rosen
Rebecca M. Rosen (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of English at Murray State University. Her book project, Postmortem Life: Anatomy, Autopsy and Testimony in Early America, considers how the voices of deceased people were extracted, interpreted, or stifled through forensic means, and how such practices formed the basis of an autoptic culture of testimonial retrieval in early America and the larger Atlantic world. This study demonstrates how postmortem practices illuminate conceptions of the deceased body as subject, object, and witness, and how such formulations contributed to the development of life writing.
“Enquire it Away”: Conjuring the Matron’s Jury in “The Welkin”
Lucy Kirkwood’s 2020 play The Welkin, which just finished its American premiere run at the Atlantic Theater, uses deliberate echoes of courtroom dramas from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible onward to make a counterintuitive point about medical and postmortem investigation specifically, and about reproductive justice more broadly – sometimes, the point of an investigation is to…
Review: “Narrative Medicine in Education, Practice, and Interventions”
Review: “Narrative Medicine in Education, Practice, and Interventions” Anders Juhl Rasmussen, Anne-Marie Mai, and Helle Ploug Hansen, Eds. (Anthem Press: 2023) The new collection Narrative Medicine in Education, Practice, and Interventions primarily evaluates the accomplishments of our field—whatever name we give it—when it comes to conveying and activating affect in practice, with most work coming…
Toppling the Ladder: The Patriarch’s Foundation and Fantasies of Reproductive Resurrection
Rebecca M. Rosen// What are the requirements for biological personhood? Are biological gestation or unaided longevity necessary preconditions, or optional? Foundation, the Apple TV+ series whose first season aired in the fall of 2021, is one of many recent scripted dramas to explore these question of personhood from the perspective of synthetic and biological beings,…
Synthetic Life: Anatomy, Paternity, and Personhood in Star Trek: Picard
Rebecca M. Rosen // What truly constitutes a person—their consciousness or their anatomy? Who determines “real” personhood, and how much does biological human(oid) anatomy have to do with that? Which is all to say, what is a person, and who can call themselves “real”? These are the questions viewers are prompted to address in Star…