Awakenings at 50: A Clinical and Cultural Retrospective
June 26-27, 2024. 10.00-16.30.
June 2023 marked the 50th publication anniversary of Oliver Sacks's medical bestseller Awakenings (1973), which documented the predicaments of forgotten survivors of the encephalitis lethargica epidemic as they emerged, with L-Dopa's chemical assistance, from decades of sleep. It is also with Awakenings that Sacks discovered himself as a "Romantic" scientist and found the writerly voice that has since earned him the title of the 'Poet Laureate of Medicine'.
One of the first academic conferences devoted Oliver Sacks's clinical and authorial practice, Awakenings at 50 charts the debts and legacies -- both clinical and cultural -- of this epoch-making book. Programme below.
This two-day symposium will appeal to clinicians working across specialities; persons with lived experience of neurological disease (especially Parkinson's); researchers in the Medical Humanities; new and longtime readers of Oliver Sacks's work; and anyone fascinated by the entanglements of medicine and art.
NUMBERS CAPPED AT 70.
