Although pain has always constituted a central human experience, recently the stakes involved in discussions of pain have become particularly high. This is especially evident in recent debates about torture, war, and the death penalty; the politics of representing, historicizing, and describing pain; changes in medical and alternative approaches to chronic and acute pain; and the spiraling cost of health care. By bringing together some of the most interesting thinkers on these topics in a wide variety of different fields, we hope to help move these conversations forward.

“Pain: An Interdisciplinary Conference” will bring together speakers from medicine, law, anthropology, history, literature, and art history to discuss the nature, implications, and experience of pain. We will consider the ways in which pain can be defined trans-historically or as culturally specific. We will discuss the nature of social suffering. We will consider the aesthetics of pain and the problems pain poses for representation. And we will ask what legal, political, and social challenges pain poses in a variety of different contexts. The conference will take place over the course of three days and consist of eight plenary talks and a concluding round-table discussion. It is free and open to the public. For additional information and to register, please see the Humanities Institute website.

Elaine Scarry, Keynote Speaker

Elaine Scarry is Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value at Harvard University. Her first book, The Body in Pain (1985), is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important works on pain of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her other major works include On Beauty and Being Just (1999) and Thermonuclear Monarchy (2014).

Rita Charon

Rita Charon is one of the central voices in the emerging field of narrative medicine. She is Professor of Clinical Medicine and Director of the Program in Narrative Medicine at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, the author of Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (2006), and the co-editor of Stories Matter: The Role of Narrative in Medical Ethics (2002).

Veena Das

Veena Das’s work on “social suffering” has helped reconfigure contemporary understandings of pain. Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, her works include Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary (2006) and Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India (1995).

Shigehisa Kuriyama

Shigehisa Kuriyama is Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. His book, The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine (1999) was awarded the William H. Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine.

Mitchell Merback

Professor of Art History at the Johns Hopkins University, Mitchell Merback’s books include Pilgrimage and Pogrom: Violence, Memory and Visual Culture at the Host-Miracle Shrines of Germany and Austria (2013), and The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (1999). He is currently at work on a project on torture and memory in medieval and early modern art.

Ron Schleifer

Ron Schleifer has written, translated, or edited twenty-two books. Most recently, he has published Pain and Suffering in the Routledge series Integrating Science and Culture (2014). Professor Schleifer is the George Lynn Cross Research Professor of English and Adjunct Professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Oklahoma.

Darius Rejali

Darius Rejali is a nationally recognized expert on government torture and interrogation and a professor of political science at Reed College. His most recent book, Torture and Democracy, won the 2007 Human Rights Book of the Year Award from the American Political Science Association.

Austin Sarat

Austin Sarat’s most recent book, Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty (2013), addresses the problem of inhumane lethal punishment in the U.S. Professor Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Amherst College.

Organizers: Rachel Ablow (English) and James Bono (History)

Please direct all questions to rablow@buffalo.edu

For more info: https://painconference.wordpress.com/