188. The Haunted Curriculum: Clinical and Therapeutic Training in Endangered Ecologies
David Ansari, University of Illinois College of Medicine; Jennifer Karlin, University of California Davis School of Medicine;
Our panel explores the affective dimensions of developing clinical and therapeutic skill and expertise in contexts suffused with violent histories of militarism, (settler) colonialism, racism, and other forms of injustice. We propose the term, haunted curriculum, as an alternative framing of the transmission of the 'culture of medicine' to what Hafferty and Franks (1994) referred to as the hidden curriculum, referring to the subtle and informal ways of learning. The notion of haunting comes from scholarship in hauntology and spectral studies, inspired by the work of Jacques Derrida (1994), that examines how violent and traumatic histories continue to loom large and permeate the present. We contend that some elements of the haunted curriculum are hidden, or at least are partially hidden from some, and others are 'hidden in plain sight' (Vyas, et al. 2020). An emerging field of scholarship examines how hospitals are haunted sites that continue to inflict violence upon patients (Good et al., 2022; Kehr, 2018; Varley & Varma, 2018). We seek to extend this field by examining how institutions of training and professionalization, including but not limited to medical, nursing, and social work schools, are spaces where specters of violence and trauma are challenged and reproduced. We invite contributions that examine the processes of developing clinical and therapeutic skill in contexts that have or continue to experience violence due to colonialism and settler colonialism, militarism, and environmental contamination. We also invite contributions that examine how training and professionalization destabilize the haunted legacies of historical and contemporary violence.
Keywords: Forms and Practices of Expertise, Medicine and Healthcare, Race/Black Studies and STS, Decolonial and Postcolonial STS; Hauntology and Spectral Studies
