How can we best understand the experience of illness and suffering in contemporary society?
What are the perspectives and experiences of physicians and other healthcare professionals?
What are the social, economic, moral, and existential problems experienced by today’s patients and their healthcare professionals?
These and several related issues will be examined in a series of seminars, Healing, Compassion & Health Care, that the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association will host on Thursday, Sept. 6, 13, 20 and 27 and Monday, Sept. 10 and 17, from 1 to 3 p.m.
The objective of the series is to discuss and demonstrate the use of literature as a method to provide insight into contemporary healthcare issues with relation to self, the medical community and the business community, as well as a means of enhancing empathy, imaginative identification, and the moral imagination.
The seminars will investigate today’s healthcare system through the eyes of healthcare professionals and their patients, and describe how the arts and humanities provide insight into contemporary culture and healthcare institutions.
The major texts that will be featured in the series include “No Apparent Distress,” a medical education memoir by Rachel Pearson; “Next to Normal,” a contemporary musical play about mental illness by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt; and “Regeneration,” a historical novel about shell-shock (PTSD) in World War I and the politics of illness during war by Pat Barker, as well as several selected poems and short stories.
The Healing, Compassion & Health Care series is free and open to the public, but registration is required by sending an email to events@waltwhitman.org.
WWBA will also present the eighth season of its signature series, Walking with Whitman: Poetry in Performance, on Friday, Sept. 7 at 6 p.m.
The event begins with a community mic that is free with admission.
After a musical prelude, the main event begins at 8 p.m., with featured poet Scott Hightower. This portion of the event is $10 for members and $15 for non-members.
Hightower is the author of “Self-evident,” “Part of the Bargain,” winner of the Hayden Carruth Award for New and Emerging Poets, “Natural Trouble” and “Tin Can Tourist.” He has also published a bilingual collection of poems in Spanish, translated by Natalia Carbajosa.
Hightower’s own translations of poems by the Spanish-Puerto Rican poet Aurora de Albornoz have garnered him a Willis Barnstone Translation Prize.
Hightower has taught at Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. He currently serves as adjunct faculty at NYU and Drew University. A former poet-in-residence at Fordham University, Hightower currently lives in New York City.
Tickets will be available at the door or for purchase online at www.waltwhitman.org. You can also call 631-427-5240 x112 to reserve tickets.
Refreshments will be served. The event is accessible to those with physical disabilities.
The Walt Whitman Historic Birthplace is located at 246 Old Walt Whitman Road in Huntington Station.
