Health and Illness

July 15, 2022 from 13:30 to 15:15

Room Number: TRS 1-073

Join the Meeting: https://ryerson.zoom.us/j/94329035844?pwd=S3p0YnM1akZSYkZ6NDFKc3ZDVjNaUT09

Chair: Elizabeth Jackson (U West Indies St. Augustine)

Nitika Gulati (U Delhi), “Rethinking Schizophrenia: Ruptured Narrative in Reshma Valliappan’s Fallen Standing”

Aditi Krishna (Dalai Lama Institute of Higher Ed), “I think, therefore I am; I think, I feel, therefore listen to me. A narrative of living with mental illness”

Mousana Nightingale Chowdhury (Cotton U), “Ruptures or Continuities? Identity and the Projected Space in Emma Healey’s Elizabeth Is Missing

Geraldine Skeete (U West Indies), “The Ruptures of Illness and Food as Metaphor for Healing in Caribbean Short Fiction”

Paper Summaries:

Nitika Gulati (U Delhi), “Rethinking Schizophrenia: Ruptured Narrative in Reshma Valliappan’s Fallen Standing”

The proposed paper will examine Reshma Valliappan’s Fallen, Standing: My Life as a Schizophrenist, for its disruption of the stigma and silence surrounding mental illness, as represented in its ruptured narrative form, and its challenge to the punitive care mandated by medico-legal systems.

Aditi Krishna (Dalai Lama Institute of Higher Ed), “I think, therefore I am; I think, I feel, therefore listen to me. A narrative of living with mental illness”

In her memoir, No Straight Thing Was Ever Made (2021) Urvashi Bahuguna writes poignantly about the daily struggles of living with diagnosed depression and the invisibilization of it in our society. How does then, a body with an invisible illness, become a site of resistance in continuing to live through the struggles of the day? Bahuguna transcribes her resistance in the form of her story, a telling of it becomes a form of resistance. Her memoir becomes the site of resistance in the narrative of the normal.

Mousana Nightingale Chowdhury (Cotton U), “Ruptures or Continuities? Identity and the Projected Space in Emma Healey’s Elizabeth Is Missing

The paper draws on epistemic bases of memory studies and theories of projected spaces to understand identities that are based less on narrative capabilities and recollection of memories and more on phenomenological experiences.

Geraldine Skeete (U West Indies), “The Ruptures of Illness and Food as Metaphor for Healing in Caribbean Short Fiction”

This paper takes a look at how food is metaphorically a succour for the sick, both sufferer and survivor of cancer, and their kin in Caribbean short stories by Barbara Jenkins and Sharon Millar. The preparation and consumption of pastelles and guava jelly provide emotional healing and coping with cancer.