Columbia Global Centers | Paris
June 14-15, 2019
“Health Beyond Borders”
The CHCI Health and Medical Humanities Network is a partnership of over 30 universities worldwide working in the medical and health humanities. In 2019, the annual Summer Institute of the CHCI HMHN will be hosted by Columbia Global Centers | Paris, with the theme, “Health Beyond Borders.”
Human health is shaped by borders—from the protected space of the hospital to the international boundaries that govern the health of populations. But even as borders offer a way of delineating health and disease in physical space, the border itself is often understood as a boundary to be transcended or a frontier to be crossed. The notion of moving beyond borders helps to make sense of broader trends in global health, from debates about migration, contested sovereignty, and environmental accords to the boundary-crossing work of clinicians such as the Médecins sans frontières. Within the medical and health humanities, the border provides a rich zone for investigation into how well-being is constituted across a continuum of individuals and populations. Importantly, at the heart of the concept of the border is the issue of representation: borders are necessarily shaped as much by human expression as they are by physical markers.
This conference explores the interdisciplinary facets of the border, from the metaphorical to the political: What counts as a border in an embodied, geographical, legal, or artistic context? What are the debates around borders in medical practice, from hospitalist medicine to epidemiology? How and why do health practitioners refer to the border for its rhetorical power, and how does the border work productively as a figure in narrative medicine, medical memoirs, and creative literature? What are the processes and structures that define well-being across borders, from nationalist immigration policies to environmental protections? How do we understand efforts to confront, dismantle, or transcend borders in healthcare? What role do borders play in the formation of state-sanctioned health policies, and how might these enable or obstruct initiatives in global health? And how might the concept of the boundary reshape our visions of a future health beyond borders?
Keynote Speakers
Jens Brockmeier (The American University of Paris), Ghada Hatem (Maison des Femmes, Paris), Samuel Roberts (Columbia University), Craig Spencer (Columbia University)
Call for Papers
We invite proposals for traditional 20-minute papers (350-word abstracts), and for complete panels (350-word abstracts for each paper accompanied by a cover-letter describing the aims of the panel as a whole). All papers are subject to the vetting of the conference committee.
Deadline for paper proposals and complete panels: January 15, 2019.
Please send all proposals to Liz Bowen ([email protected]). All proposals must include your name, academic affiliation (if any), and preferred email address. Questions may be addressed to Dr. Loren Wolfe ([email protected]) and Dr. Arden Hegele ([email protected]).
Conference Steering Committee (Columbia University and Columbia Global Centers | Paris)
Arden Hegele, Loren Wolfe, Eileen Gillooly, Rishi Goyal
CHCI Steering Committee
Rishi Goyal (Columbia University), Brian Hurwitz (King’s College London), Deborah Jenson (Duke University), Maheshvari Naidu (University of KwaZulu-Natal), Kathryn Rhine (University of Kansas)
Access and support requirements: The conference is located at Columbia Global Centers | Paris (Reid Hall), in Montparnasse. If you have any access or support requirements please let us know as soon as possible so that we can do our best to facilitate your needs.
