Panel V - Narrative as Therapy: Personal Stories and Self Care

Panel V

Title

Narrative as Therapy: Personal Stories and Self Care

Chair

Professor Amy Wai-sum LEE

Description

While personal experiences have been given the due respect of being something privately owned by the individuals, their potential therapeutic value for the individuals, in some cases for a community, is increasingly appreciated. Writing and art therapy have been well established mechanisms for reflecting on personal stories and leading to better self-understanding and acceptance. In the context of the stressful life situations in global societies, much intensified during the pandemic, this panel explores the possibility of deploying personal stories in various formats to create therapeutic experiences and cultivate resilience in contemporary life. The transcendence of the personal to achieve possibly a collective or communal care is especially pertinent in the Global Chinese context.

Keynote Speaker

Professor Amanda CALEB, Department of Medical Education, Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, US.

Topic: Narrative Medicine and the Development of Narrative Humility for the Care of Self and Others.

URL: http://www.geisinger.edu/acaleb

Short bio:

Amanda M. Caleb is professor of medical humanities at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where she directs the medical humanities initiatives and the Systems, Society, and Humanism in Medicine curriculum. She holds a PhD in English and an MA in nineteenth-century studies from The University of Sheffield, an MPH from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and a BA in English from Davidson College. Her research interests include the medical and public health humanities, health communication, health narratology, narrative medicine, and bioethics and the Holocaust.

Panelists

Dr. Johan EDDEBO, Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society (CRS), Uppsala University, Sweden.

Topic: Recovering the Relational Subject: On transcending Cartesian reductionism in a multi-polar global culture

URL: https://www.katalog.uu.se/profile/?id=N12-1513

Short bio:

Johan Eddebo is Associate Professor in Philosophy of Religion at Uppsala university. His research involves metaphysics, the nature of consciousness, philosophy of science, epistemology in general, as well as issues of religion and politics. While anchored in the framework of analytical philosophy, he approaches philosophy broadly, also employing perspectives relating to phenomenology, Medieval thought, and the Aristotelian tradition.

Dr. Jonathan FOX, Founder, the Listening Hour; Director Emeritus, Centre for Playback Theatre, New York. (via zoom)

Topic: Emergent group story and the promise of narrative reticulation

URL: www.ListeningHour.org

Short bio:

Jonathan Fox is the founder of the Listening Hour and co-founder of Playback Theatre. He is author of Acts of Service: Spontaneity, Commitment, Tradition in the Nonscripted Theatre and Beyond Theatre: a playback theatre memoir; co-author with Jo Salas of Personal Stories in Public Spaces: Essays in Playback Theatre by its founders; and the editor of The Essential Moreno: Writings on Spontaneity, Psychodrama and Group Method. He has degrees from Harvard University, Victoria University (NZ), and a D.Phil. h.c. from the University of Kassel (Germany).

Dr. Christophe TONG Yui, Department of Humanities and Creative Writing, Hong Kong Baptist University.

Topic: Poetry in Theatre-in-Education: Revisiting Learning Difficulties

URL: https://scholars.hkbu.edu.hk/en/persons/YUITONG

Short Bio:

Dr. Christophe Tong is an Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU). He holds a Bachelor’s degree in French Literature and a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris III, as well as a PhD in Chinese Language and Literature from Fudan University in Shanghai. Dr. Tong is an accomplished literature and creative writing educator, having taught at HKBU’s Language Centre and the Open University of Hong Kong. He has received numerous accolades, including awards for his novel Footnotes and a collection of essays titled A Pilgrimage in Foreign Literature. Tong has also served as an adjudicator for various literary awards.

浸會大學人文及創作系副教授。巴黎新索邦大學法國文學學士學位及比較文學碩士，上海復旦大學中國語言文學博士學位。曾於香港浸會大學語文中心及香港公開大學任教，學術研究之外，唐博士亦積極投入文學創作和文學教育，並為多個文學獎擔任評審。小說《Footnotes》曾獲第十屆中文文學雙年獎，而散文集《異國文學行腳》也獲得第四屆香港出版雙年獎(文學及小說組)。

Professor Amy Wai-sum LEE, School of Arts and Social Sciences, Hong Kong Metropolitan University.

Topic: Learn to Tell and Tell to Learn: An Intimate Healing Experience at the Human Library

URL: https://www.hkmu.edu.hk/tc/staff-profile/?email=awslee&unit=&po=Y

Short bio:

Amy Lee has a background in comparative literary studies and    Buddhist studies, and has published in a range of topics including feminine autobiographies, witchcraft and witchery, experiences of solitude, teenage literature of magic, marginalized experiences by female writers, and popular film and fiction. In her teaching, she has experimented with approaches of caring pedagogy, and used literary and cultural texts to facilitate emotional wellness on top of subject knowledge. Recent research projects include using Playback Theatre to cultivate self-understanding, self-care, and building connection among diverse groups of participants. She has been an associate professor at the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. She is now a professor at the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Hong Kong Metropolitan University.