Textual Therapies

Oxford University
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Textual Therapies Podcast

This series, presented by Emily Troscianko, aims to crystallise, communicate, and expand our understanding of how texts and health interact. Health includes everything we tend to split into 'physical' and 'mental'. Texts include everything built (at least partly) of words: novels, stories, memoirs, poems, blogs, magazine articles, self-help books, private diary jottings – even drama, TV, and film… Through conversations with experts drawing on a wide range of professional and personal experience, the episodes offer introductions to some of the many perspectives from which texts and health are investigated, experienced, and understood. We ask questions, review findings, and consider next steps for this realm of health-humanities inquiry. You can find accompanying notes for each episode, and get in touch (including to suggest subjects or people for future episodes) at www.troscianko.com/textual-therapies. The intro/outro music is Between Worlds (Instrumental) by Aussens@iter (c) copyright 2017, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/tobias_weber/56664 Ft: (Smiling Cynic)

Episodes

  1. 12/09/2018

    Computational Literary Studies and Mental Health

    A project combining English literature, experimental psychology, and computational linguistics, with a focus on entropy, abstraction, and mental health. James Carney's current research investigates how mental illness interacts with textual structures – specifically, using machine learning to investigate the potential therapeutic qualities of literature with different levels of entropy (unpredictability) and abstraction, for anxiety disorders versus depression. We also touch on wider questions of motivation in the health humanities and literary studies, the appeal of belief in the transformative power of literature, and the expansion of textual/computational inquiry out into structural anthropology. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

    30 min

  2. 12/09/2018

    What Does Disney do to Mental Health?

    Exploring the dangers of Disney’s take on poverty, mental health, and relationships. With backgrounds in medical humanities and school therapy and social work, Jenifer Fisher and Nikki York describe a recent project analysing Disney films in terms of how they depict poverty and mental illness and what solutions they present to these problems (almost always: get yourself rescued by one perfect relationship). Their analysis found a strong, and realistic, correlation between characters' adverse childhood experiences (ACE) score (a measure of neglect and abuse) and the incidence of poverty and mental illness in their portrayals. Our conversation explores concepts of the 'self-made man' and the 'virtuous poor', the reduction in emphasis on poverty in films since 1937, and the dangerous consequences of presenting singular relationships as solutions to mental health problems. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

    33 min

  3. 12/09/2018

    Combating Fat Stigma Through Narrative

    A series of narrative workshops helping make life better for fat people. Drawing on training in social science and medicine respectively, Rachel Fox and Kelly Park describe a series of workshops for medical students and fat participants designed to combat weight stigma. They outline their quantitative and qualitative findings, including the importance of physical presence in tackling the physiological and phenomenological aspects of fat phobia, the importance of narrative cues in permitting obliquely creative transformations of difficult experiences, and the importance of getting beyond one-sided correction of prejudice towards a more equal and reciprocal learning process. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

    28 min

  4. 12/09/2018

    Why Public Health Needs Narrative

    An introduction to an often overlooked context for using narrative in healthcare: public health. A creative writer and public health practitioner and researcher, Lise Saffran explains the practice and rationale for using narrative in public health as opposed to clinical or medical contexts. We explore in particular the difficulties of constructing and assessing truth versus salience or persuasiveness in public health narratives, and how working with narrative changes the nature of research practice and communication. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

    29 min
  • 4 Episodes

About

This series, presented by Emily Troscianko, aims to crystallise, communicate, and expand our understanding of how texts and health interact. Health includes everything we tend to split into 'physical' and 'mental'. Texts include everything built (at least partly) of words: novels, stories, memoirs, poems, blogs, magazine articles, self-help books, private diary jottings – even drama, TV, and film… Through conversations with experts drawing on a wide range of professional and personal experience, the episodes offer introductions to some of the many perspectives from which texts and health are investigated, experienced, and understood. We ask questions, review findings, and consider next steps for this realm of health-humanities inquiry. You can find accompanying notes for each episode, and get in touch (including to suggest subjects or people for future episodes) at www.troscianko.com/textual-therapies. The intro/outro music is Between Worlds (Instrumental) by Aussens@iter (c) copyright 2017, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/tobias_weber/56664 Ft: (Smiling Cynic)

Information

  • Creator
    Oxford University
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    4
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Oxford University; the media items are released with a Creative Commons licence
  • Show Website
    Textual Therapies

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