Convened by Tamarin Norwood and Loralie Rodrigues

Birth and death may be the only certainties in life. Yet in life writing, the task of representing birth and death is an uncertain one. They are fundamental events but are also, in many ways, quite untellable. This is no less true of the mid-life event of giving birth.

This research symposium accompanies a forthcoming special issue of Life Writing journal, edited by Dr Tamarin Norwood, which asks how life writing attends to the challenges presented by writing the edges of life. For the symposium, we are bringing life writing into dialogue with health humanities, by further narrowing our focus onto two specific questions:

1. How might we define ‘practices’ of life writing as distinct from its processes (techniques) and its products (texts)?

A written text might provide factual or affective insight into birth, birthing or death, or perhaps offer a sense of community or catharsis. Writing techniques might provide guidelines for individuals navigating birth, birthing or death in scholarship or in life, including for historical, auto/biographical or therapeutic reasons.

But there is a third thing: practice. Writers are making decisions, finding ways to think and ways to know, being interested and not interested in things, and developing a craft and a style and a drawerful of drafts even when there is not really any writing going on. A writer’s practice is the thing that shapes and allows for all the processes and products of their craft, and yet this third but very central thing seldom makes the transition into health humanities because it is ephemeral, difficult even for the writer themself to grasp, and still more difficult to put into words and into the service of healthcare. And so:

2. In applied health humanities including arts in hospitals, palliative narrative therapy, arts in bereavement care and literature in medical education, how might the concept of writing ‘practice’ help practitioners to more effectively achieve their aims?

Focusing on these two questions, this symposium aims to build bridges between scholarship and practice in life writing and health humanities and better understand what the practice of life writing can contribute to the ways we navigate birth, birthing, and death in healthcare practice.

This event is free and open to all. Reservation is required.

This is an informal working group conversation with invited contributors. We have a handful of in-person spaces available. If you are interested in contributing to the conversation, you can request a space here, indicating the reason for your interest, and we will confirm by 25 October. If you are unable to attend the event, please inform Events Manager, Dr Eleri Watson (events.oclw@wolfson.ox.ac.uk) as soon as possible— any returned tickets will be assigned to those on the waiting list.

Alternatively, you are welcome to listen to the conversation online as an audience member. Online audience members will be sent the Zoom link the day before the event

This event is funded by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship Grant