King Lear and the Not So Happy Ending

Greg Doran, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, thinks the Bubonic plague helped shape William Shakespeare’ writing. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/dec/13/a-happy-ending-for-king-lear-trauma-of-plague-caused-shakespeare-to-change-plays-finale We studied King Lear sometime in college. Yes I found it depressing. Interesting that the source play (that Shakespeare based his King Lear on) had a happy ending, but he was so traumatized by all the […]

My Medical Humanities Journey

In the post introducing the blog (WORMHOLE), I mention that I’ve thought of the sciences and arts as two separate entities, with me having one foot in the sciences and the other in the arts and hopping in an “all or nothing” way between those two. I think the best illustration for this dichotomy happened […]

Nurses are Superheroes

A lot of the published fiction and nonfiction prose in the medical humanities deals with physicians. Think Atul Gawande’s books and Robin Cook’s novels (Elaine and I did a term paper for that in our college Humanities 103 class looong ago). Same thing with TV shows – the likes of Dr. Kildare, Doogie Howser, M.D. […]