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Mission Statement:
Narrative Medicine fortifies clinical practice with the narrative competence to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by the stories of illness. Through narrative training, the Program in Narrative Medicine helps doctors, nurses, social workers, and therapists to improve the effectiveness of care by developing the capacity for attention, reflection, representation, and affiliation with patients and colleagues. Our research and outreach missions are conceptualizing, evaluating, and spear-heading these ideas and practices nationally and internationally.



Faculty Seminars in Narrative Genetics

Narrative genetics is a new and interdisciplinary way to understand genetics in our lives, our culture and our politics. The Faculty Seminar on Narrative Genetics, like all ISERP seminars, is
free and open to the public. Each workshop will focus on an aspect of narrative genetics and will include a presentation of work in progress. Readings will be posted to the seminar website
(or suggested if a published book) by the presenter to enhance the discussion. Others are encouraged to share their work at these sessions in brief informal presentations, and, if they
wish, to post manuscripts to the seminar for comment and discussion. For more information visit the ISERP website.

Schedule of Seminar Meetings 2008-2009
Thursdays, 5:30-7:30, Rm 801, International Affairs Building, Columbia University [except where otherwise noted below]. Light refreshments will be served.

October 23, 2008, [Rm 1134 IAB]
Reproduction and Genetic Narratives: A Genetic Journey through Narrative Film
Sayantani DasGupta, MD, MPH, Program in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University

December 4, 2008, [6-8pm]
Advocacy and the Genetic Narrative: Newborn Screening, Parents’ Advocacy, and the Discourse of Urgency
Rachel Grob, Ph.D., Institute of Child Development, Sarah Lawrence College

January 22, 2009
Practicing Narrative Genetics
Genetics Rounds: The Human Side of the Human Genome Project
Robert Marion, MD, Division of Developmental Medicine and Genetics, Children’s
Hospital at Montefiore; Professor of Pediatrics, Ob/Gyn and Women’s Health, Albert
Einstein College of Medicine

February 26, 2009
Family Narratives of Heritability
Family Stories: Narrative Genetics and Conceptions of Heritability in Pregnant Women
Marsha Hurst, Ph.D. Program in Narrative Medicine & ISERP, Columbia U; Caroline
Lieber, MS, CGC, Human Genetics; Linwood J. Lewis, Ph.D., Psychology; Rachel Grob,
MA, Ph.D, Child Development Institute, Sarah Lawrence College.

April 2, 2009
Genetic Disease Narratives
Narratives of Inheritance: Comparing Huntington’s Narratives across Cultures,
Continents and Centuries.
Alice Wexler, Ph.D., Research Scholar, UCLA, Center for the Study of Women; Nancy
Sabin Wexler, Ph.D., Departments of Neurology & Psychiatry, Columbia University;
President, Hereditary Disease Foundation [Nancy Wexler is pending confirmation]

May 7, 2009
Genetic Narratives of Race
Geonomics: the Spaces and Races of Citizenship in the Genome Age
Priscilla Wald, Ph.D., Department of English and Women’s Studies, Duke University



Program in Narrative Medicine
630 West 168th Street PH 9-East Room 105 New York, NY 10032
Tel: 212.305.4975 Fax: 212.305.9349

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