Illness Reading Group

What does it mean to be ill? - A reading group on Illness

Illness, care, and medicine have taken on greater and greater importance in intellectual debates. The emergence of the medical humanities, alongside other developments, can be seen to represent this, but at a more fundamental level, illness has announced itself as an important issue across a wide range of fields. Even so, the concept of illness remains remarkably elusive and difficult to fully grasp. Indeed, one of the reasons that illness resists definition is precisely the interdisciplinary demands that come with it: as a concept it stretches and surpasses the boundaries of traditional disciplines. This reading group is designed to address this question, bringing together members of the universities from the humanities and sciences.

For Michaelmas term, we will be reading Havi Carel's book, The Phenomenology of Illness (OUP 2016). Each week, we will take a chapter from the book and use it to direct and anchor our discussions. The book can be found on Oxford Scholarship Online via iDiscover. Those interested are invited to read the introduction and first chapter for the first meeting.

Our first meeting will take place at The University Centre (right next to the Mill Pub), on the third floor from 19:00 - 20:00 on Tuesday the 17th of October. Meetings will take place weekly throughout the term. A tentative schedule is below.

All students and staff are welcome to attend. Please send an email to cf410@cam.ac.uk if you wish to be added to the mailing list for the group.

The group is collaboratively organised by members of the French, History and Philosophy of Science, and Public Health Departments.

17 October: Introduction, Ch 1 Why Use Phenomenology to Study Illness?

24 October: Ch 2 Phenomenological Features of the Body

31 October: Ch 3 The Body in Illness

7 November: Ch 4 Bodily Doubt

14 November: Ch 5 A Phenomenology of Breathlessness

21 November: Ch 6 Is Well-Being Possible in Illness?

28 November: Ch 7 Illness as Being-towards-Death, Ch 8 Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare

5 December: Ch 9 The Philosophical Role of Illness


Organisers: Joseph Wu, Rebecca Love, & Cillian Ó Fathaigh