Rounds is off for the summer and will return in September.

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Past Rounds

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May 4, 2011: Marie Howe, Poet and Teacher

Marie Howe is the author of three volumes of poetry, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2008); The Good Thief (1998); and What the Living Do (1997), and is the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). Stanley Kunitz selected Howe for a Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets. She has, in addition, been a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and a recipient of NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughsahres, Harvard Review, and The Partisan Review, among     others. Currently, Howe teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia, and New York University.

April 6, 2011: Rafael Campo, Physician and Poet - "Cultural Competence:  Poetry and the Importance of Voice in the Illness Experience”Rafael Campo, M.A., M.D., D. Litt., is a poet and essayist who teaches and practices internal medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.  He is also on the faculty of Lesley University’s Creative Writing MFA Program.  He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Poetry Series award, and a Lambda Literary Award for his poetry; his third collection of poetry, Diva (Duke University Press, 2000), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and his most recent, The Enemy, won the Sheila Motton Book Award from the New England Poetry Club, one of the nation’s oldest poetry organizations. His work has also been selected for inclusion in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and has appeared in numerous prominent periodicals including The Nation, The New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, Paris Review, Salon.com, Slate.com., and the Washington Post Book World.    

March 2, 2011: Heather Harpham, Performance Artist - "Happiness" Heather Harpham is a writer and performer of physical theater whose solo performances have been presented widely in New York City venues including on Theater Row and at The Looking Glass Theater (as a 2009 Space Grant recipient). Internationally, her solo Happiness has played in Nepal at Theater Gurukul as part the annual Kathmandu Theater Festival. Harpham is the recipient of an Independent Artist Grant from the Marin Arts Council, the Brenda Ueland Prose Prize and the Herbert Rubin Award for Creative Writing. As a core member of the physical theater ensemble, Company SoGoNo, she received a nomination for a New York Innovative Theater award for their acclaimed piece, The Art of Memory. Heather has taught master classes in physical theater and improvisation in many settings including at NYU, The Neighborhood Playhouse, the Pratt Institute, Sarah Lawrence College, and Oglethorpe University. She holds an MFA in Theater and a MA in Creative Writing, both from NYU. www.heatherharpham.com

February 2, 2011: Matt Spitzer, President -  Doctors Without Borders - "Being With, Bearing Witness, Speaking Out –Voices of Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres.”

Dr. Matthew Spitzer joined MSF in 1999, establishing primary care services and training medical providers in Khampa Tibet, southwestern China.  He worked in Moyamba, Sierra Leone as field coordinator, with MSF-USA in a project exploring the medical needs of asylum seekers in detention in the U.S., and in Kampong Cham, Cambodia, where he coordinated response to epidemic dengue.  He was first elected to the Board of Directors of MSF-USA in 2006, elected President in 2008, and is a member of the International Council Board of MSF-International.A family physician, Dr. Spitzer worked for 10 years in San Francisco at the St. Anthony Free Clinic and its affiliated drug rehabilitation program, practiced for a year and a half at San Quentin State Prison, and taught in the contextually-integrated case-based curriculum of UC Berkeley’s Joint Medical Program.  He joined the CFCM at Columbia in February 2010, practicing at the Farrell Family Health Center on 158th Street, and co-directing the Primary Care Clerkship of the medical school’s Major Clinical Year. 

January 5, 2011: Ana Blohm,"Vague Boundaries and Awkward Intimacies: Conflicts of a Physician Photographer" 

Ana Blohm is a general internist working for the Mount Sinai Visiting Doctors Program.  Born in Venezuela, she obtained her undergraduate degree from Harvard University.  She completed her medical degree at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and her Internal Medicine residency at Mount Sinai Hospital.  In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Blohm is Senior Faculty Advisor to Humanities and Medicine students at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. For a number of years, Dr. Blohm, a photographer, has been making portraits of her patients. This endeavor, coupled with her interest in bioethics, has led her to study the ethical issues involved at the intersection of photography and medicine. 

December 1, 2010: Michael Berube, "Life As Jamie Knows It." Michael Bérubé is the Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University, where he holds appointments in the Department of English and the Program in Science, Technology, and Society.  He is the author of seven books to date. His most recent book, The Left at War, was published in 2009 by NYU Press. He is also the editor of The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies (Blackwell, 2004), and, with Cary Nelson, of Higher Education Under Fire:  Politics, Economics, and the Crisis of the Humanities (Routledge, 1995).  Bérubé has also written for a wide variety of academic journals such as American Quarterly, the Yale Journal of Criticism, and Modern Fiction Studies, as well as more popular venues such as Harper's, the New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, and the Nation. Life As We Know It was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 1996 and was chosen as one of the best books of the year (on a list of seven) by National Public Radio.

November 3, 2010: Nick Flynn discussing his recent memoir The Ticking is the Bomb.  Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (Norton, 2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir, and has been translated into ten languages. He is also the author of two book of poetry, Some Ether (Graywolf, 2000), which won the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, and Blind Huber (Graywolf, 2002). He has been awarded fellowships from The Guggenheim Foundation, The Library of Congress, The Amy Lowell Trust, and The Fine Arts Work Center.

October 6, 2010: Jonathan Metzl discussing his recent book The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease. Jonathan M. Metzl is associate professor of psychiatry and women’s studies and director of the Culture, Health, and Medicine Program at the University of Michigan. A 2008 Guggenheim award recipient, Metzl has written extensively for medical, psychiatry, and popular publications. His books include Prozac on the Couch and Difference and Identity in Medicine.

September 8, 2010: Joshua Brandon Bennett (Crip)Walking on Water: Thinking critically about race, performance, and The Disabled God.  Performance artist Joshua Bennett has recited his original work in venues ranging from the Sundance Film Festival to The White House. He is a Marshall Scholar, Ford Foundation Fellow, and doctoral candidate at Princeton University whose work integrates issues of disability, stage performance, and racial

identity.

June 2, 2010:  Cortney Davis  Nurse-poet and memoirist Davis reads from her new collection, The Heart’s Truth: Essays on the Art of Nursing.  Richard Selzer has said the collection “should be required reading at every nursing school in the country. In writing of the highest quality, it offers a powerful and moving portrait of what it means to be a nurse."

May 5, 2010: Randi Hutter Epstein   Dr. Epstein, a medical journalist who has written for, among other publications, The New York Times Magazine and the Washington Post, reads from her new book
"Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank." "[A] sharp, sassy history of childbirth.... Roll over, Dr. Lamaze, and make room for Epstein's eyebrow-raising history." --Kirkus Reviews.

April 7, 2010: Susan Squier  Author of Babies in Bottles: Twentieth Century Visions of Reproductive Technology, and Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human Frontiers of Biomedicine, Squier is Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Penn State.  She speaks on her latest work, graphic fiction of illness and disability.

March 3, 2010: Shamita Das Dasgupta  Domestic violence activist and faculty at NYU Law School, Dasgupta reads from Mothers for Sale: Women in Kolkata’s Sex Trade.  Based on hundreds of interviews with women and children sex workers in India, this “unique and urgently needed book” focuses on motherhood, sex work, and human rights in local and national contexts.

February 3, 2010: Robin Romm  Romm reads from her acclaimed book The Mercy Papers: A Memoir in Three Weeks, written about the three weeks prior to her mother’s death. In a front cover review, the NYT Book review called it “a furious blaze of a book.” 

January 6, 2010: Sharon Olds  The renowned American poet reads from her work. New York State poet laureate from 1998-2000, the New York Times has said of her work: "Like Whitman, Ms. Olds sings the body in celebration of a power stronger than political oppression."

December 2, 2009: Virgil Wong  Artist and filmmaker Wong’s work grapples with bioethically vexed medical technologies – including nanorobots, a smart-as-human genetically engineered mouse, and a male pregnancy program.  His fictional “RYT-Dwayne Medical Center” (www.rythospital.com) had been called “disarmingly authentic” by the New York Times.  

November 4, 2009: Harlan Coben  NYT bestselling author reads from Hold Tight, which examines family, adolescent suicide, and a child’s right to privacy over a parent’s right to know.  Dan Brown calls Coben “the modern master of the hook and twist – luring you in on the first page only to shock you on the last.” 

September 2, 2009 G. Thomas Couser, Author of Vulnerable Subjects: Ethics and Life Writing and Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability and Life Writing, and Founding Director of the Disability Studies Program at Hofstra University speaks on the critical role of disability studies in medical education.

October 7, 2009:  Sandeep Jauhar  Now a practicing cardiologist, Jauhar will read from his memoir Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation.  Vincent Lam has called the book “A vivid portrait of the culture of a New York City hospital, with its demanding hierarchy and sometimes indifferent cruelty." (NYTimes) 

Available on video AND audio! June 3, 2009 Oliver Sacks, called “the poet laureate of medicine,” is a neurologist and author of such books as The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Awakenings reads from his widely acclaimed latest book, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain. “This book not only contributes to our understanding of the elusive magic of music but also illuminates the strange workings, and misfirings, of the human mind.” (NY Times)

May 6, 2009 Priscilla Wald, Professor of English and Women’s Studies reads from Contagious: Cultures, Carriers and the Outbreak Narrative, which Dr. Rita Charon has called “a magnificent book, notable for its prose, its expansiveness, its courage and its creativity.”

April 1, 2009 Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus, Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God and Diversity on Steroids Julie Salamon reads from Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus, Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God and Diversity on Steroids, a “fascinating portrait of a Brooklyn, N.Y. hospital… much more than white coats and beeping consoles—it’s 21st century America in a microcosm.” (Salon)

March 4, 2009 The Cure for Grief

Nellie Hermann will read from The Cure for Grief, “a subtle, elegiac coming-of-age novel about catastrophe, grief and the persistence of everyday life. ...A gorgeously readable meditation on mourning and survival. Profound, poetic and original." (Kirkus Reviews)

February 4, 2009 The Mercy Rule

Perri Klass, pediatrician and author of classic medical memoirs A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years as a Medical Student and Baby Doctor: A Pediatrician’s Training, will read from her new novel The Mercy Rule. Chris Bohjalian said, “Few writers write as beautifully or authentically about parenting.”

January 7, 2009 Hurry Down Sunshine

Michael Greenberg, a columnist for London's "Times Literary Supplement," reads from his new memoir Hurry Down Sunshine. In the words of Oliver Sacks: “Lucid, realistic, compassionate, illuminating, Hurry Down Sunshine may provide a sort of guide for those who have to negotiate the dark regions of the soul.”

December 3, 2008 Staying Human in Medicine

Samuel Shem, author of iconic hospital novel The House of God reads from his new novel The Spirit of the Place, which Jerome Groopman has called “a deeply moving and profoundly intelligent exploration of the complexities and rewards of family, profession and place.”

November 5, 2008 Book Reading: To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed

Alix Kates Shulman, the award-winning writer of bestseller Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen read from her new memoir To Love What Is: A Marriage Transformed, which chronicles a love story of a husband and wife as they face his traumatic brain injury and her transformation into caregiver. In the words of Oliver Sacks the memoir “celebrates the deep resilience of self, and the power of a loving relationship, in the face of devastating brain damage.”

October 1, 2008 Personal and Cultural Narratives about Living with Cancer

A presentation and discussion of the work of a partnership between a writer/ethicist Nancy Berlinger and an artist/representer of ill persons’ bodies, Julia Boltin. This works articulates the power of seeing, hearing, representing, and beholding our patients throughout their illness and care. Professor Nancy Berlinger is a literary scholar and research ethicist at the Hastings Center and the Yale School of Nursing. Ms. Julia Boltin is a fine art printer and designer who has documented the effects of cancer treatment on the human body. Together we examined the role of stories in shaping the idea of cancer survivorship and the potential role of stories in improving care for real persons living with cancer.

September 3, 2008 Portraits of Compassion: The Stories We Have to Tell

A discussion with author/photographer Rosann Olson inspired by her book, This is Who I Am: Our Beauty in All Shapes and Sizes (2008), a collection of intimate studio photographs of women. Rounds opens a discussion of women, body image, and compassion through the stories and images of 54 women, ages 19-95, who reveal their bodies for the camera accompanied by their very personal essays of youth, aging, sexual abuse, anorexia, Alzheimer's disease, obesity, pregnancy and more. Olson is an award-winning photographer and a writer with a master’s degree in journalism. Sept 2008 NM rounds

 

May 7, 2008 Cancer Survival and Inner Life

Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over thirty years. He has published works of poetry and creative non-fiction, and his poetry has been nominated for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Nepo read from his latest book of poems and prose, Surviving Has Made Me Crazy which gathers 18 years of writing about his own journey with cancer. As a cancer survivor, he is committed to the usefulness of daily inner life. Through both his writing and teaching, he remains devoted to the life of inner transformation and relationship. For 18 years, Mark taught at the State University of New York at Albany. He now serves as a Program Officer for the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a non-profit foundation devoted to fostering awareness of the power of love and forgiveness in the emerging global community. He continues to give readings, lectures, and retreats.May 2008 NM Rounds

April 2, 2008 The Experience and Neuroscience of Alzheimers

In her book I Can’t Remember What I Forgot, Sue Halpern reviews what is known by neural scientists about the causes and course of Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias. At Rounds she discussed the experiences of persons with failing memories and what we all can do to improve or preserve our memory.  She debunks some of the more common myths surrounding Alzheimer’s diseases and normal memory loss and provides us with information about important discoveries being made in these fields. Halpern has been hailed as “an uncommonly gifted and compassionate writer.” (LA Times) She is a frequent contributor to such publications as the New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York  Review of Books, Audubon and Good Housekeeping. She received a doctorate from Oxford University in 1985 and began teaching at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is the author of two previous books of non-fiction, Migrations to Solitude, a New York Times notable book of the year, and Four Wings and a Prayer: Caught in the Mystery of the Monarch Butterfly, which is soon to be released as a feature-length documentary. She has also published two novels. A former Rhodes Scholar and Guggenheim fellow, Halpern is currently a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College. A resident of Ripton, Vermont, she lives with her husband, Bill McKibben, and their daughter Sophie. April 2008 NM Rounds

March 5, 2008 Book Reading: Kyra

Carol Gilligan is a writer best known for her 1982 book, In a Different Voice, described by Harvard University Press as “the little book that started a revolution.”  In 1996, she was named one of Time magazine’s twenty-five most influential Americans. She was born and raised in New York City. She earned her B.A. with highest honors in English Literature from Swarthmore College and her Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard, where she was a member of the faculty for thirty-four years. Her award winning research led in 1997 to the creation of Harvard’s first professorship in Gender Studies, which she held until 2001 when she returned to New York to become a University Professor at NYU. She lives with her husband in New York City and in the Berkshires. KYRA is her first novel. Ms. Gilligan will be in introduced by Professor Jerome Bruner, Research Professor of Psychology & Senior Research Fellow, School of Law, at New York University. Professor Bruner is an internationally renowned psychologist, influential educational philosopher, and architect of the cognitive revolution of the twentieth century. He is the author of, among many other books, Acts of Meaning and Actual Minds, Possible Worlds.March 2008 NM Rounds

February 6, 2008 Understanding Cancer in Young Adults Through First Person Narrative

Jennifer Stevens Madoff, DrPH, is on the faculty of the Department of Sociomedical Sciences in the Mailman School of Public Health. She published her late husband Roger Madoff's memoir, Leukemia for Chickens, which recounts their experiences living with cancer. Her talk included a reading from Leukemia for Chickens. February 2008 NM Rounds

 

January 2, 2008 Workshops in Poetry, Eulogy, Healing

Concurrent interactive workshops:

Reading, Seeing, and Making Poetry - Rose Bromberg - Resident poet with the Program in Narrative Medicine

Offering a Patient's Eulogy - Joseph Fennelly, M.D. - Internist, grief counselor, and Chair of the Medical Society of New Jersey's bioethics committee

Writing One's Memoir of Healing - Nicholas Steiner M.D. - Internist, survivor of melanoma, and author of memoir Unforeseen Consequences January 2008 NM rounds

 

September 5, 2007 Book Reading: Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures
Dr.Vincent Lam, emergency medicine physician in Toronto, will read from his recent collection of short stories entitled Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures.

October 3, 2007 Book Reading: A Body of Work
Dr. Christine Montross, psychiatrist and writer, will discuss her recently published book, A Body of Work, about the experience and consequences of dissecting the cadaver in the anatomy course in medical school.

November 7, 2007 Book Reading: Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies

Sayantani DasGupta, MD, MPH and Marsha Hurst, PhD, editors of the newly published Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies, and several contributors will read from this unique collection of voices of women experiencing illness and will discuss these poems, stories and essays in relation to the field of narrative medicine. 

December 5, 2007 Reading in Slow Motion
Professor Richard E. Miller, Chair of the Department of English, Rutgers University and theorist of expressive composition, will discuss "Reading in Slow Motion" as a method of engaging readers in the co-creation of text.