Interdisciplinary Seminar Series 2022/2023

Past Events: 

Situated Personhood: Insights from Caregivers of Minimally Communicative Individuals 

By: Laura Specker Sullvian, Ph.D.

April 26th, 2023 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Summary: 

For caregivers of minimally communicative individuals, providing support in the absence of clearly meaningful responses is ethically fraught. We conducted a secondary analysis of qualitative data from caregivers of individuals who are minimally communicative, including persons with advanced dementia and individuals in disorders of consciousness.  Our analysis led to two central claims: (1) Personhood is a threshold concept that is situated, relational, and dynamic; (2) In circumstances in which personhood is difficult to judge, caregivers can “fill the gap” to reach the threshold through a repertoire of strategies. Because personhood is in part an attribution from others, a situational loss of personhood does not preclude restoration, nor does it eliminate moral status.

Bio:

Laura Specker Sullivan is an Assistant Professor of philosophy. She is a specialist in interdisciplinary and cross-cultural ethics who incorporates her experience in clinical ethics consultation and qualitative research into her philosophical work. She received her PhD from the University of Hawaii focusing on informed consent in Japan. She is the former Director of Ethics at the Medical University of South Carolina and a previous Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the College of Charleston. She has held fellowships at the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of Washington, Neuroethics Canada at the University of British Columbia, and the Kokoro Research Center at Kyoto University. 

Attaining the Tomb: The Social Life of an Eleventh-Century Shrine in the Miracles of St. Maiolus.

By Scott G. Bruce, Ph.D.

February 15th 2023 from 12:30 to 1:30pm 

Summary: 

The early eleventh–century Miracles of Saint Maiolus narrated accounts of more than four dozen miracles that took place at the shrine of Maiolus of Cluny in the town of Souvigny, where the abbot died in 994.  This article examines the evidence of this little–known source to reconstruct the social life of a popular pilgrimage destination at the turn of the first millennium.  It presents a profile of the kinds of people who visited Maiolus’ tomb, including their names, genders, and occupations.  Next, it analyses the maladies for which these pilgrims sought relief through the healing power of the saint.  Finally, it explores the social networks that facilitated the movement of pilgrims with motor and sensory disabilities from their homes to the abbot’s shrine.  

Bio: