Episode 6 - Inci-dental Humanities

LitSciPod: The Literature and Science Podcast

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)

Music composed and performed by Gareth Jones

Laura and Catherine are joined by a special guest: Dr Peter Fifield, Lecturer in Modern Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. Peter relates how his interest in bodies and their ailments grew out of his work on Samuel Beckett, discussing where his research and teaching intersects with #litsci and the medical humanities. Peter also debates whether Dorothy Richardson has written “the great dentistry novel” and introduces his current project, Sick Literature, which considers a range of non-psychological illnesses and ailments as well as explore the gendered assumptions that underpin early twentieth century understanding of illness. At the end of the episode, you can hear Peter read an extract from Dorothy Richardson’s novel The Tunnel (1919).

Episode resources (in order of appearance):

Introduction

• Alexander Stewart’s patent at the Wellcome Collection
• Advertisement for Templar Malins dentist in Cardiff at the Glamorgan Archives.
• Chris Otter, The Victorian Eye (2008)
• Crawford Dental Collection at the Museum of Healthcare at Kingston
• The Sanitary Record
• Diseases of Modern Life database: over 3000 sources are documented (for free!) covering the intersections between literary, scientific and medical culture in the C19th. Also includes links to those which are freely available online: have a rummage here https://diseasesofmodernlife.web.ox.ac.uk/database
• ‘Influenza’ from the handwritten manuscript magazine for the Myllin Literary and Debating Society, number 1 (1898) held in the National Library of Wales archives
• Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden (1791)

Interview

• Frank Norris McTeague (1899)
• Dorothy Richardson, The Tunnel (1919)
• James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of LitSciPod - we enjoyed making it!