Rebuilding the Ill Body on the Stage: Lauren Gunderson and the Medical Humanities

A lecture by Prof Noelia Hernando-Real (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) as part of the School of Creative Arts Research Forum.

The interdisciplinary field known as the “Medical Humanities”—which explores human health and disease through the methods and materials of the creative arts and humanities—has become one of the most compelling areas of research in the past few decades. The Medical Humanities provides an interdisciplinary and interprofessional approach to researching and understanding the profound effects of disease on patients, health professionals, and the social world in which we live. Unlike the medical sciences, the medical humanities—which include narrative medicine, (auto)pathographies, cultural studies, ethics, philosophy and the arts (literature, film, visual arts), among others—focuses more on making sense of the sick and of various maladies than on measuring scientific parameters. This seminar provides an introduction to the Medical Humanities and explores ways in which literary texts might be approached from this field. After providing this theoretical framework, plays by US playwright Lauren Gunderson will be presented as case studies. Notions of pathography, body types, illness narrative structure and illness metaphors will be discussed, specifically in her play I and You (2013), presented here as a didactic pathography that focuses on liver transplantation through the often-forgotten female young adult patient. Noelia Hernando-Real is Associate Professor of English and American Literature at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain). On a fellowship granted by the Spanish Ministry of Universities (Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia) and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (CA2/RSUE/2021-00383), in 2022-2023 she is a Visiting Researcher at Trinity College Dublin, where she is conducting research on Anglo-American contemporary women playwrights. She has authored Self and Space in the Theater of Susan Glaspell (2011), Voces contra la mediocridad: la vanguardia teatral de los Provincetown Players, 1915-1922 (2014) (Voices against Medicocrity: The Avant-garde Theatre of the Provincetown Players), the only book to date in Spanish about the Provincetown Players, and Rosas en la arena: los relatos de Susan Glaspell (2022) (Roses in the Sand: Susan Glaspell’s Short Fiction). She has coedited several volumes: Performing Gender Violence, with Barbara Ozieblo (2012), and Negotiating Gendered Spaces (2013) and Gender Studies: Transatlantic Visions (2016), with Isabel Durán et al. She has published on the theater of Susan Glaspell, Jane Bowles, Maria Irene Fornes, Marcia Norman, Paula Vogel, Sarah Ruhl, Lauren Gunderson, Naomi Wallace, and Suzan-Lori Parks, among others. Her work has been published by Routledge, Oxford UP, Cambridge UP, Palgrave Macmillan and by journals such as the New England Theatre Journal, Eugene O’Neill Review, REN and Critical Stages. Noelia Hernando-Real was the President of the International Susan Glaspell Society (2015-2021) and at the moment is a member of the Research Project “Gender and Pathography from a Transnational Perspective” (PID2020-113330GB-100), based at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. The School of Creative Arts Research Forum meets weekly on Mondays from 10am-11am in the Neill Lecture Theatre in Trinity Long Room Hub. The aim of the Forum is to provide a space for School researchers, both staff and postgraduate students, to share their ideas in an informal and supportive environment. It is also an opportunity for the School to hear about the research of colleagues both from within TCD and from outside the university who share our research interests. In line with the research agenda of the School, talks encompass traditional research and practice-based research. Please indicate if you have any access requirements, such as ISL/English interpreting, so that we can facilitate you in attending this event. Contact: smcqueen@tcd.ie