Laurence Talairach, “Liminal Spaces: Literature, Film and the Medical Museum.”

摘要

The cross-fertilization of the medical and literary fields is nothing new. In theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries, literature often interrogated the medical reality ofthe day. In the twenty-first century, the rise of medical humanities as a disciplinetypifies how literature may be used as a means of changing or reflecting on medicalpractice. However, the question of whether interdisciplinary projects involvingliterature and medicine demand a thorough knowledge both of the history of medicalpractice and of the trajectory of literary genres is rarely addressed. And yet such anapproach was pivotal to a collaborative project with a medical museum that I led in2013–14 and that resulted in the making of a short film (Liminality, directed by V.Lari) and a photographic exhibition (V. Lari). As shall be seen, the ways in which theemerging ScienceHumanities may help frame and examine literature-and-sciencescholars’ research output may be vital to the future recognition and understanding ofprojects of this type.