Healing

When we say healing, most people think “biomedicine,” which targets mainly disease and physical injury—definitely bad stuff. However, there are other serious afflictions, not targeted by biomedicine, which have effectively been targeted by social healing. This course will look at two books discussing social healing: Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters at the End (responding to the ravages of aging) and Teya Sepinuck’s cases in Theater of Witness (responding to myriad afflictions occasioned by our modern world.) A final point to consider: while this approach does not seek to replace biomedicine, the course will discuss how social healing really does heal.

Suggested Reading: Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters at the End, ISBN 978-0805095159; Teya Sepinuck, Theater of Witness: Finding the Medicine in Stories of Suffering, Transformation, and Peace, ISBN 978-1849053822.

Steve Piker is an anthropologist who has done field work in Thailand and the U.S. He has also taught for 44 years at Swarthmore and instructed more than 30 courses at Maine’s senior colleges. Healing is a life-long career interest.