James Belarde // “They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.” –Nathaniel Lee, 17th century dramatist, after being committed to Bethlem Hospital In late June 1340, the members of the French royal court found themselves in a tricky situation. France’s navy had just been decimated in the Battle…
Tag: performance
Transcending Nervous Illnesses: an Artistic Praise of “Violent Fits”
Pauline Picot // “There are some violent fits, some disorders of the body that often excite the nervous system and feed the imagination with an inconceivable activity: the body is in pain, but the mind is lucid. Some people may be ill and yet astonish us with the liveliness of their ideas, and there are…
“Very Dramatic”: Healing, Teaching, and the Placebo Effect
Roanne Kantor // Once again, I am in the midst of teaching a medical humanities course to a group primarily composed of pre-med students. Even though it’s quite distant from my original training, I’ve taught this course more than any other since leaving graduate school. Whenever I work with this population, I think of my…
Disability as Experience
In this post, I’d like to make things a bit more personal than I have so far. Last week I got into a debate with a professor. It’s not important what this debate was about. Instead, it’s important what this debate wasn’t about. This professor was asking my class—myself and six other graduate students/artists—to participate…
