The 43rd Keio Symposium on Bridging Humanities, Social Sciences and Medicine: The Potential of Humanities and Social Science Research in Medicine

2025/04/24

Date: Thursday, May 22, 2025, 15:00-18:00

Venue: Room 423, South School Building, Keio University Mita Campus (Campus Map < https://www.keio.ac.jp/ja/maps/mita.html > 【4】)

(You will be notified by email if the classroom is changed.)

Language: English/Japanese

Registration: Please register here < May 22 Keio Symposium Registration (The 43rd Keio Symposium registration) > by approximately 9:00 PM on May 21.

Abstract: In this symposium, we will welcome Professor Shigehisa Kuriyama, Director of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, and Professor Sean Brotherton, President of the Society for Medical Anthropology, to discuss the potential of humanities and social science research in medicine. Professor Kuriyama, who has reconstructed the history of medicine from a perspective that bridges East Asia and Europe, will discuss effective ways to talk about medical research from a humanities and social sciences perspective. Professor Brotherton, who anthropologically analyzes Cuba's socialist medical practices, will speak on the light and shadow of humanitarian medicine. We will also be joined by the prominent STS researcher, Professor Koichi Mikami, as a commentator.

Presentation 1

Shigehisa Kuriyama:

The Art of Presentation: What Researchers Should Learn from Magicians

Presentation 2

Sean Brotherton:

Solidarity Humanitarianism: Cuban Social Medicine on a Global Stage

Speakers:

Shigehisa Kuriyama

He is the Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and serves as the head of the humanities division at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. His research explores a wide range of philosophical issues from the perspective of the comparative cultural history of Japan, China, and Europe. His book, "The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine" (Zone, 1999), was awarded the William H. Welch Medal of the American Association for the History of Medicine in 2001. It has been translated into Chinese, Greek, Spanish, and Korean. Professor Kuriyama's articles and edited volumes explore the history of punctuality, cognition and expression, the metaphysics of muscular strength, the nature of money, and the imaginative hold of long-forgotten waste products. He is currently conducting research on the themes of happiness and presence, connecting them to (1) the scenery of a fish market in the early 19th-century Edo period, (2) the evocation of conversational expression in Shikitei Sanba's Ukiyoburo, (3) Thomas Edison's phonograph, and (4) Hans Holbein's portrait "The Ambassadors." His recent work, "Fluid Matter(s)" (2020), is an experimental e-book that explores the expressiveness of narrative, freed from the fixed images and text of a book's pages.

Sean Brotherton

Dr. P. Sean Brotherton is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at New York University. He is a cultural

anthropologist who studies and theorizes health, medicine, the state, subjectivity, and psychoanalysis. Brotherton’s research intervenes in debates of medical anthropology, the anthropology of the body,

and Latin American and Caribbean studies. Across his work, he asks: What constitutes health or well-

being, or the notion of a healthy subject, to whom does it matter, and why?

Commentator:

Koichi Mikami

Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Liberal Arts, Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University. Specializing in Science and Technology Studies (STS), he conducts research on advanced life and medical sciences from the perspectives of the sociology of science and the sociology of medicine. Focusing on the impact that the creation of new knowledge and the development of cutting-edge technologies have on society and values, he explores ways of science and technology governance that enable the coexistence of diverse values. He has investigated and analyzed the impact of the creation of human iPS cells in 2007 on the research environment and its direction in Japanese regenerative medicine research, and has reported his findings through academic papers and conference presentations.

Inquiries: Junko Kitanaka ( junko.kitanaka@keio.jp < mailto:junko.kitanaka@keio.jp > )

Contact: Junko Kitanaka ( junko.kitanaka@keio.jp < mailto:junko.kitanaka@keio.jp > )

This research is supported by the JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research JP21H05174.