EVENT: Poetry & Conversation with Rachel Hadas & Rita Charon

A platform for poetry, health care policy, & conversation

Poet Rachel Hadas

will read from her recent book

 STRANGE RELATION:

A Memoir of Marriage, Dementia, and Poetry

and join in conversation with

Rita Charon, MD, PhD,

Director, Program in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons

September 22, 6:30 pm

The Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College

47-49 East 65th Street, New York, NY

This is event is free. Seating is limited and RSVPs are essential. Please respond as soon as possible: chmp@hunter.cuny.edu

In 2004, after nearly 30 years of marriage, Rachel Hadas’s husband, George Edwards, a 61-year-old composer and professor of music, was diagnosed with early-onset dementia. Strange Relation is her account of the difficult years of “losing” George—a time when reading and writing were essential parts of what kept her going, as she “tried to keep track … to tell the truth.” The writer and physician Danielle Ofri has said of the book: “A poignant memoir of love, creativity and human vulnerability. Rachel Hadas brings a poet’s incisive eye to the labyrinth of dementia.”
Rachel Hadas, PhD, MA, is Board of Governors Professor of English at Rutgers University in Newark. She is the author of many books of poems, essays, and translations, including The Ache of Appetite, The River of Forgetfulness, Laws, Indelible, and Halfway Down the Hall: New & Selected Poems. She co-edited the anthology The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Foundation grant, and an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Rita Charon, MD, PhD, is Professor of Clinical Medicine and the founder and director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. A general internist in primary care, Dr. Charon took a Ph.D. in English when she realized how central is the telling and hearing of stories to the work of doctors and patients. She is the author of Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness and a co-editor of Psychoanalysis and Narrative Medicine and of Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics.

Media Partners & Co-Sponsors:
THE CENTER FOR HEALTH, MEDIA & POLICY (CHMP) at Hunter College is an interdisciplinary initiative for advancing the health of the public and healthy public policies. CHMP is a catalyst for shaping crucial conversations about heath and health care through media, research, education, and public forums. http://centerforhealthmediapolicy.com/

THE WRITING CENTER: The Writing Center CE, new to Hunter College and directed by Lewis Burke Frumkes, encourages creative writing and learning across the cultural spectrum. To that end the Center offers workshops taught by professional writers and presents speaking events with world-class figures that are open to students, faculty, and the public without charge. www.hunter.cuny.edu/ce

ARTS ACROSS THE CURRICULUM: This summer Hunter College received a planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to pilot a new initiative that will capitalize on the College’s renowned arts programs, faculty, and facilities during this academic year. A variety of approaches will introduce the arts throughout the curriculum and expose more Hunter undergraduates to the rich cultural resources of New York City.

 

THE ROOSEVELT HOUSE PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE AT HUNTER COLLEGE http://www.roosevelthouse.hunter.cuny.edu