Virtual Seminar by Dr Marissa Mika (Independent Researcher, USA): Emotional Labor in the Writing and Researching of Africanizing Oncology

Abstract:

"You seem to be very emotionally invested in your work." When I received this comment about my work on the history of the Uganda Cancer Institute in 2015 at a job interview at a fancy east coast university in the United States I was taken aback. My question was, "How can this not be emotional and well as intellectual work?" Needless to say, I didn't get the job. Fast forward a decade later and I am still thinking about the bodily, existential, spiritual, and practical issues of being emotionally involved in one's work. If the body is a research instrument, tuned into the surroundings of acute suffering and unexpected joy, how do we work with that instrument? How do we create something honest from this emotional labour? In this talk, I don't have the answers, just questions and stories. Together, we will visit the wards of the Uganda Cancer Institute through stories and the questions they raise about writing with feeling. We will have an opportunity to consider the role of emotion in the writing and researching of Africanizing Oncology.

Bionote:

Dr Marissa Mika is a writer and editor living in Berkeley, California. She is the author of Africanizing Oncology: Creativity, Crisis, and Cancer in Uganda, which was a finalist for both the ASA Best Book Prize and the Bethwell A. Ogot Award for Best Book in East African Studies in 2022. Before taking an early retirement from academia, Dr. Mika was the founding director of the medical humanities program at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda. Trained as a historian and anthropologist of medicine, science, and technology in Africa, she has a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in the History and Sociology of Science and a MHS in International Health from Johns Hopkins. https://www.marissamika.com/