Seminars

For our April 2026 meeting, the University Seminar on Narrative, Health, and Social Justice at Columbia will be reintroducing its annual symposium session. This year's title is “From Burnout to Thriving: Interrogating Systemic Barriers to Recruitment and Field Longevity" Our featured speaker will be Janice Haskins, PhD, Head of the Leadership Development Institute at the American Psychological Association (APA). She will be giving a talk on barriers to recruiting mental health care providers of color into under-resourced communities and service areas. Dr. Haskins will bring an organizational psychology lens to this timely conversation on resources, infrastructure, service provision, and community health. After the talk there will be a panel discussion with expert guests about self-care and burnout prevention needs and strategies for providers of color who may be overburdened because of the systemic barriers that impact recruitment, education, and training efforts. An interactive Q&A with the audience will close the session.

For our inaugural spring seminar session we will be joined by Donna Bulseco, Editor in Chief of Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, to discuss the new collection, Where It Hurts: Dispatches from the Emotional Frontlines of Medicine (2026). As part of a moderated discussion, Donna will share insights about the process of bringing these pieces from the digital space into physical print. She will also present contributors who will read work from this debut anthology and engage in dialogue about the importance of reflective writing practices, representation of the voices in healthcare, and the opportunities present in engaging with the experiences of others through literature. Where It Hurts offers a glimpse into the daily realities of those charged with taking care of us at our most vulnerable. In raw and revealing essays, stories, and poems, from doctors, nurses, EMTs, therapists, and more, we hear what it’s like to deal with difficult patients, life-changing diagnoses, private doubts, painful failures, and the victories that keep them going.

As a poet, scholar, and researcher, Nicole Robinson will be discussing her work at the intersections of palliative care and art, sharing insights from her experiences building a narrative medicine program in a clinical setting and leading growing research projects related to narrative and pediatric critical care. She is the Narrative Medicine Program Manager at Akron Children's Hospital, teaches at Northeast Ohio Medical University, and is the author of Without a Field Guide (Unbound Edition Press), a finalist for the 2024 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry. Robinson's expertise will focus our conversation, and we invite folks to engage in an intimate Q&A at the end of the session.

A conversation with Renée Saindon Russas, director of the upcoming play, These Shining Lives. The play revolves around the real-life circumstances of women in the 1920s who worked in a watch factory, painting watch dials with glowing radium-rich paint. While the characters and company in the play are based on six historical figures in Ottawa, IL, over 4,000 factory workers would succumb to the effects of radium poisoning. Upon learning their condition was fatal, instead of fading into the background, these women decided to risk their names, images, and reputations and take the watch company to court six times over the 1930s in search of justice for their bodies, families, and workplace conditions for those who came after them. This legal battle would ultimately lead to the formation of OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration we know today. Renée will discuss the relevance of theatrical works based on non-fictional and historical narratives to contemporary issues of social justice, health, and advocacy.