Heroic Doctors?: From Medical Memoirs to The Pitt

In this hybrid talk we will first explore the contemporary genre of physician-authors’ memoirs. These Bildungsroman works tend to follow a narrative in which the young clinician is progressively debased by the rigors of training and exposure to illness and mortality until an epiphanic experience figures them—directly or by proxy—as a patient, whereupon they recoup their understanding of their own essential humanity. It is the reverse of the speculative fiction plot twist in which a presumably human character is discovered to be a robot, zombie, clone, or the like, as here the interchangeable mask or white coat of the professional role is figuratively pulled aside to reveal—surprise!—a unique human being. What is at stake with such plots?

In addition, we will discuss the way these themes are explored in television medical procedurals, focusing on the current series The Pitt, which is garnering tremendous attention and critical acclaim in the United States. How does the show depict its clinian characters, and what is at stake in such plots? We will invite discussion and comparison with other representations of the healthcare context, including TV serials in the UK.

About the speaker

Danielle Spencer, PhD, is a faculty member in the Columbia University Narrative Medicine Graduate Program. Author of Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity (Oxford University Press, 2021) and co-author of Perkins-Prize-winning The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (OUP, 2017), her scholarly and creative work appears in diverse outlets, from The Lancet to Ploughshares. Her research interests include narrative medicine, health humanities, narrative ethics, and media criticism.(www.daniellespencer.com)

This event is free to attend. The Zoom link will be circulated closer to the date.

This event is organised by the Narrative Practices Lab of the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities.