The case study is a genre that traverses the humanities, social sciences, and medicine, yet its conventions, epistemologies, and politics differ dramatically across these fields. What work does the case do? What does it reveal, and what does it conceal? How might a truly multidisciplinary approach to case-making generate new knowledge about the human? These are the questions that animate the Neubauer Collegium's Case of the Human project, an ambitious research collaboration aimed not merely at translating theory across disciplinary boundaries but at co-producing knowledge that transcends them.

This conference will highlight three related elements of the project: 1) We will discuss the ongoing publication of our “Cases in Global Social Medicine” series in The Lancet; 2) We will delve into the genre of the case in medicine, the humanities, social sciences, and beyond through a series of reflective roundtables; 3) and, through a series of comics-making workshops with artists, we will graphically explore and construct selected case studies from across disciplinary boundaries.

Conference Schedule

THURSDAY, APRIL 16

Neubauer Collegium
5701 S. Woodlawn Ave.

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10:00 am
Welcome and Overview

Eugene Raikhel (University of Chicago)
Scott Stonington (University of Michigan)
Brian Callender (University of Chicago Medicine)

10:30 am
Roundtable 1: The Case as Genre

Emily Yates-Doerr (Oregon State University)
W. J. T. Mitchell (University of Chicago)
Mayssa Rekhis (Independent Scholar)
Scott Stonington (University of Michigan)
Matthew Wolf-Meyer (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Moderator: Michele Friedner (University of Chicago)

2:00 pm
Roundtable 2: The Case and Social/Structural Justice

Ursula Francis (University of Chicago)
Michele Friedner (University of Chicago)
Micere Keels (University of Chicago)
Ashish Premkumar (University of Chicago Medicine)

Moderator: Eva Melstrom (University of Chicago)

5:00 pm

Keynote Address by Sir Michael Marmot
Frank Billings Auditorium, P-117
Entrance through Goldblatt Pavilion lobby (860 E. 59th St.)

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Panelists

Zoe Boudart (University of Michigan)
Michele Heisler (University of Michigan)
Junko Kitanaka (Keio University)
Mirko Pasquini (University of Gothenburg)
Mayssa Rekhis (Independent Scholar)
Scott Stonington (University of Michigan)

SATURDAY, APRIL 18

Neubauer Collegium
5701 S. Woodlawn Ave.

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1:30 pm
Roundtable 3: Emic and Etic Theories of Cases and Working Across Disciplines

Summerson Carr (University of Chicago)
Zhiying Ma (University of Chicago)
Mirko Pasquini (University of Gothenburg)
Eugene Raikhel (University of Chicago)
Harris Solomon (Duke University)

Moderator: Alois Tirard (University of Chicago)

3:15 pm
Concluding Remarks & Wrap-up

The Case of the Human Research Team

Moderator: Seth M. Holmes (UC Berkeley)