Reducing Creativity to a Psychiatric Syndrome: On the Pathologization of Female Poets

October 17th, 2024. Public reading of my latest collection of poems, Permettez-moi de palpiter [Allow Me to Pulsate][3]. Open discussion with the audience. […] Suddenly, in a eureka moment, an elderly man speaks up: “You have Cotard’s syndrome. You must have. All the symptoms you describe match up.” This anecdote – whose significance is, in fact, more than anecdotal – gives me the opportunity to revisit a centuries-old tradition in patriarchal discourse of pathologizing female poets.

Grief and the Medical Humanities

Diana Novaceanu // The ultimate goal of all art is relief from suffering and the rising above it. (Gustav Mahler)  One sunny day, towards the end of March, I suffered the loss of someone very dear to me. It had not been unexpected; I had the privilege to say good-bye in person. Everything medically possible…

Collectively Holding Space: A Reflection

Amala Poli // I find, when I write, I don’t want to write well-made scenes, narratives that flow, structures that give a sense of wholeness and balance, plays that feel intact. Intact people should write intact plays with sound narratives built of sound scenes that unfold with a sense of dependable cause and effect; solid…