Welcome to the 320th episode of COVID-Calls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Jacob Steere-Williams, I am a historian of public health at the College of Charleston, in Charleston, South Carolina. This week I will be the guest host of COVID-Calls while the program’s founder, Scott Knowles, takes a much-needed recharge.
Dr. Lakshmi Krishnan is a physician, medical humanities scholar, and cultural historian of medicine at Georgetown, where she is the Founding Faculty Director of the Medical Humanities Initiative. Her current research and forthcoming book, The Doctor and the Detective: A Cultural History of Diagnosis, contracted for publication with Johns Hopkins University Press, focuses on the histories of diagnosis and clinical reasoning, with broader relevance for physician professional identity formation, medical epistemology, and diagnostic bias and health equity. Lakshmi sent me the humble biography, so let me fawn on her work a little here. Not only was she a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he got a DPhil in 19th century English literature, she then got an MD at Johns Hopkins and interned at Duke. Her work has appeared in The Lancet, Annals of Inernal Medicine, Literature and Medicine, Modern Languages Review, Victorian Literature and Culture, and Victorian Poetry.
My second guest is Dr. Lorenzo Servitje. He is an Associate Professor of Literature and Medicine at Lehigh University. He holds a dual appointment in the English Department and Health, Medicine, and Society Program. Lorenzo is the author of the newly published, and incredibly exciting book Medicine is War: The Martial Metaphor in Victorian-Literature and Culture, published this year by SUNY press. His work has appeared in the Journal of Medical Humanities, Critical Survey, Science Fiction Studies, Literature and Medicine, and Games and Culture. Lorenzo also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Medical Humanities.