Spanning Cancer with Professor Richard Freadman

Richard Freadman was educated at Brandeis University and the University of Oxford. He is the author of a memoir, Shadow of Doubt: My Father and Myself (Bystander, 2003). He writes and lectures on illness memoir and on the use of life writing in health care settings. Richard’s new book, Stepladder to Hindsight, a sequence of auto/biographical narratives, will be published by hybrid press in April 2016.

This lecture discusses ways in which autobiographical writing of caner experience can be used by non-professional writers living with the disease or its aftermath, and has been used by professional writers in cancer memoirs, to help find meaning in cancer experience. It outlines a method of narrative therapy which I term reparative writing and gives hypothetical example of how the process might work for an individual living in remission from cancer. The lecture also considers wider sociological dimensions of cancer experience in contemporary western culture.

Friday, January 29
Australian Tea Meet & Greet 12:30 – 1:15PM
Lecture 1:30 – 4:30PM

Please RSVP by January 25 by contacting Dr. Theresa Van Lith at tvanlith@fsu.edu or 850-645-9890.