"Medical Humanities & Diversity Studies - Intersections of Medical and Diversity Critique Discourses and Multidimensional Dimensions on Body, Mind, Illness, and Health in Literature and Media from the 19th to the 21st Century"

Interdisciplinary Conference of the BaGraLCM at the University of Bamberg

September 30 - October 2, 2025
Markusstraße 8a (96047 Bamberg), MG2/00.10

The interdisciplinary conference, organized in the framework of the Bamberg Graduate School for Literature, Culture, and Media (BaGraLCM), aims to discuss scholarly perspectives at the intersection of medical humanities and diversity studies. Through literary texts and media, we want to demonstrate the close connection between illness, health, and social categories and inequalities, including intersectional ones such as gender, class, race, age, disability, and religion given that medical contexts especially reflect social inequalities, systemic power relations, and structural discrimination.

Studies demonstrate the profound influence of factors such as race, class, disability, and religious affiliation on medical care and illness perceptions. A central topic is the pervasive racial bias in medicine, evident in diagnoses and treatment methods. The emergence of the relatively new discipline of gender medicine demonstrates the importance of considering sex- and gender-specific differences in medical diagnoses and therapies. These complex interrelations are often compellingly thematized in literature and art, illustrating how central these questions are to human experience. Across all kinds of artifacts and genres, especially autobiographical and autofictional writing, representations of illness experiences and related topics can be explored while considering social differences.

Key discussion questions include:

• What roles do gender, social class, race, origin, religion, disability, and other dimensions of diversity play in illness narratives?
• How do these factors shape our understanding of health and illness, and how are they represented in literature and media?

Further information about the conference and the program can be found here: https://www.uni-bamberg.de/romlit1/studium/interdisziplinaere-tagung-medical-humanities-diversity-studies/

Organisation: Sofie Dippold, Susen Halank, Tabea Lamberti, Florian Lützelberger