Old Email Archive

digest 2001-03-30 #001.txt

11:17 PM 3/29/01 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 
Daily SLS Email Digest

-> CFP for Rhetorics of Healing January 2002
     by "Carol Colatrella" 

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Date: 29 Mar 2001 07:40:59 -0800
From: "Carol Colatrella" 
Subject: CFP for Rhetorics of Healing January 2002

The Rhetorics of Healing

Centre for Rhetorics & Hermeneutics and the Institute for Antiquity and
Christianity, January 2002.

The conference is to be divided into two program segments. The first
will
convene under the auspices of the Rhetorical New Testament Project of
the
Institute for Antiquity and Christianity in Claremont, CA, from the
afternoon of Wednesday, January 23 through Thursday evening, January 24.
The second will convene under the auspices of the Center for Rhetorics
and
Hermeneutics in Redlands, Friday, January 25 through Saturday evening,
January 26. (Although any one is welcome to do so, a participant need
not
attend both segments.)

For the purposes of this conference "disease" and "cure" are referents
to
biological states of normative healthiness. "Illness" and "healing" are
the social relationships of individuals to groups. "Illness" is a
disease
(AIDS, "impure" hemorrhaging, "ambiguous" genitalia, mental "illness",
homosexuality, the "hysterical" female), often culturally determined,
with
profound social consequences. "Healing" is the re-inclusion of a
diseased
"patient" back into society. In other words, one can be "healed" without
being "cured"; one can be "ill" without being "diseased".

The Claremont segment will be devoted to presentations analyzing New
Testament and early Christian literature. Rhetorical artifacts for
analysis could include miracle discourse, healing stories, conversion
narratives and other texts where the metaphors transformation from a
state
of "illness," arrested development, or incompleteness are found.

The Redlands segment is open to proposals from scholars in Hebrew Bible,
ethics, medicine and literature, to name the most obvious. We hope to
encourage inter- and intra-disciplinary conversations and to explore,
among other things, the influences on formation of western cultural
attitudes about everything from faith healing to end-of-life issues to
popular and political responses to the disabled.

Questions that could be pursued by presenters include, according to the
rhetorics of healing: How do the dynamics of the doctor-patient
relationship precipitate or prevent "healing"? How does managed care
affect the dynamics of "healing"? Are there current political, social,
medical practices of "curing" that isolate the patient, hence
precipitate
"illness" as part of "curing"? What can faith traditions teach us about
mind/body dynamics of "curing" and "healing"? Is there a presumption
that
"healing" is "curing", "curing" is "healing", even "illness" (social
stigmatization) is "curing" (e.g., quarantine?)? Are end-of-life issues
such that one can argue for the absence of "curing" in order to "heal"?
What can the disabled teach us about rhetorical and social dynamics of
"disease" and "illness"?

The purposes of convening the conference include: 1) to explore through
extensive discussion -- papers will not be read but circulated
beforehand
- -- the effect of stories in sacred literature regarding the nature of
illness and healing on cultural practices of and attitudes about health
care; 2) to consider the ramifications of such attitudes and practices
upon current medical management, including the ways in which we as a
society and as institutions of caring handle the questions of
end-of-life
issues, AIDS, terminal diseases, genital/gender assignment and
identification, homosexuality and bisexuality, "sin", etc.; and 3) offer
recommendations for specific areas of future research and further
presentation of findings.

It is our expectation that a volume of conference proceedings will be
published.

Those wishing to participate in the conference should submit a proposal
of
approximately 150 words to either James Hester (hester@uor.edu) or David
Hester-Amador (david@ars-rhetorica.net) by no later than May 1, 2001.
Please indicate to which program segment the paper is being proposed. If
you have questions, send them to us by e-mail and we will answer them as
quickly as possible. If we collect enough of the same kinds of concerns
and issues, we will write up a FAQ on the conference and post it on our
web sites.

Finally, it is our hope to have sufficient funding that no registration
fees will be necessary.The proceedings will be open to the public, and
we
encourage the broadest possible distribution of this call for papers,
including among ethicists, physicians and ancillary providers, biblical
scholars, mind/body and alternative healing theorists and practitioners.
_________________________________________________________________
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