Join us as Arthur Frank, author of classic and groundbreaking work in medical/health humanities, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics (University of Chicago Press, 1995, 2013), reflects on what his book was trying to do then and what it is doing now. After describing the ways that the book’s three parts fit together, Frank will then pivot to ask why health humanities needs a complementary figure of the vulnerable reader; what is vulnerable reading and what can it do and for whom?
Arthur Frank is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Calgary. Since retirement he has taught at VID Specialized University in Oslo and, most recently, in the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. His books include At the Will of the Body, The Wounded Storyteller, and in November 2022, King Lear: Shakespeare’s Dark Consolations (Oxford). His honours include being an elected fellow of The Royal Society of Canada, a winner of the Society’s medal in bioethics, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Canadian Bioethics Society.
