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March 9, 2006 -- On March 16 and 17, the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture will sponsor a two-session colloquium on “Telling Suffering: Pain, Trouble, Trauma and Their Stories.” Featuring four, nationally known medical professionals and scholars, the event will offer in-depth analysis of suffering and storytelling as an important tool for understanding and healing physical and psychological trauma.
Guest speakers include Jonathan Shay, staff psychiatrist for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. For nearly 20 years, he has worked closely with Vietnam and Gulf War veterans studying the challenges that homecoming has posed for many of them.
“The parallels between now – with troops beginning to come home from Iraq – and the homecoming of Vietnam War vets are striking,” said Shay, acclaimed author of “Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character” and “Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming.” “War is war. The problems of homecoming to a civilian society remain the same.”
Other guest speakers include Arthur Frank, professor of sociology at the University of Calgary, and author of several books on physical suffering and storytelling; Cheryl Mattingly, professor of anthropology and occupational science and occupational therapy at the University of Southern California; and Paul Komesaroff, a physician and medical ethicist at Monash University in Australia.
The colloquium sessions will be held in the Dome Room of the Rotunda. Both are free and open to the public.
- Thursday, March 16 – 3:30 to 6 p.m. with a reception in the Lower West Oval room to follow.
- Friday, March 17 – 9:30 a.m. to noon.
For more information about the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, please contact Marilyn Roselius at (434) 924-0998 or Joshua Caler at (434) 924-0883.
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