CELLS Winter Speaker Series - Dr. Travis Chi Wing Lau (Kenyon College): "Pain and the Two Cultures"
Channel: Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences
Date: 2022-01-27

Abstract: "This talk traces my intellectual formation as a scholar of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and medicine and the impact such historical work has had on my understanding of the relationship between what C.P. Snow described in 1959 as "the two cultures." How does an attention to earlier historical periods complicate this model of the sciences and the humanities as irreconcilable in their differences? Through reflections on my own research and poetic work on the histories and theories of chronic pain and disability, I will consider how interdisciplinary, literary historical scholarship intervenes in medical and scientific thinking and the stakes for the future of this interdisciplinary work."