The Bullitt History of Medicine Club will host a talk by Janet Downie, associate professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Classics.

According to Downie:

"In this talk I’ll look at three idiosyncratic examples of medical narrative from the ancient Greek and Roman worlds: a letter exchange filled with details of the correspondents’ aches and pains; a personal diary of illness and divine healing; and a funerary inscription in which a father and mother record the details of their child’s fatal illness. These ancient medical texts – all intended for publication – challenge modern readers to think about the relationship between illness and aesthetics. New directions in narrative medicine (Y. Liatsos; cf. A. Kleinman, R. Charon) offer some possible avenues of interpretation, with their emphasis on aesthetic practices of close-reading and slow-looking, and on narrative process rather than interpretive closure."