Professor Arthur Frank

Arthur Frank is author of an illness memoir, At the Will of the Body (1991, new edition 2002); a study of illness narratives, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics (1995); and an argument for the possibility of actual dialogue in health care, The Renewal of Generosity: Illness, Medicine, and How to Live (2004). He is currently writing a book with the working title, Letting Stories Breathe, about how stories make experience possible and make life social. His longer-term research involves changes in the narrative resources that shape illness experience. Dr. Frank is an elected fellow of The Hastings Center, a pre-eminent bioethics center, and an elected fellow of The Royal Society of Canada. He is Professor of Sociology at the University of Calgary and lectures internationally.

Keynote Presentation: How Stories Make Experience Possible, and How They Make Life Dangerous

In The Wounded Storyteller (1995), I described how stories can rescue people from the narrative wreckage of illness. Today, the relation between stories and experience seems more complicated than it seemed then. Stories allow people to segment the world’s flow and flux into what is known as experiences. To the extent that individuals and communities can choose the stories they tell, stories can heal. But stories also have a trickster side: they cause mischief and grief. This lecture explores humans’ need for stories, and stories’ danger for humans

	MP3 of presentation (6.5 MB)
	Home page at University of Calgary
	Streaming video (windows media format) of presentation