Andrea Charise

Biography

Ph.D, English (with collaborative program in “Healthcare, Technology, and Place”), University of Toronto M.A, Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario B.Art.Sc, Bachelor of Arts & Science (Comb. Hons. Comparative Literature, summa cum laude), McMaster University. Dr. Charise joins UTSC’s Health Studies Program from the University of Iowa where she was Postdoctoral Fellow-in-Residence at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. Alongside her undergraduate duties at UTSC, Dr. Charise also holds a faculty appointment in the University of Toronto’s Graduate Department of English. Her teaching and research focus on health humanities and humanistic approaches to health studies; English literature, especially the novel and nineteenth-century British writing (the field in which she earned her PhD); old age and age studies; embodiment; critical theory; metaphorics; narrative training for health professionals; and interdisciplinarity. Dr. Charise is currently at work on a book entitled "Aging, Population, and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination", which explores how the invention of population in the early 19th century impacted broader cultural conceptualizations of older age. In addition to receiving recognition for her teaching and scholarship in literature (most recently, the 2014 Polanyi Prize for Literature), Dr. Charise has had a productive career as a medical researcher (geriatrics, clinical epidemiology). She is an Associate Researcher on Concordia University’s Aging+Communications+Technologies (ACT) Project (a seven-year, $2.99 million SSHRC Partnership Grant), serves on the International Health Humanities Network (IHHN)’s International Advisory Board, and is one of four founding Executive Committee members of the Modern Languages Association (MLA)’s brand new Forum on “Medical Humanities and Health Studies”. Dr. Charise welcomes inquiries from students and colleagues interested in the interdisciplinary conceptualization of health and illness, especially arts- and humanities-based methods, theory, and creative practices (e.g., literature, film, visual arts). She can be found online at www.andreacharise.com or on Twitter as @AndreaCharise. Ph.D, English (with collaborative program in “Healthcare, Technology, and Place”), University of Toronto M.A, Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario B.Art.Sc, Bachelor of Arts & Science (Comb. Hons. Comparative Literature, summa cum laude), McMaster University. Dr. Charise joins UTSC’s Health Studies Program from the University of Iowa where she was Postdoctoral Fellow-in-Residence at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. Alongside her undergraduate duties at UTSC, Dr. Charise also holds a faculty appointment in the University of Toronto’s Graduate Department of English. Her teaching and research focus on health humanities and humanistic approaches to health studies; English literature, especially the novel and nineteenth-century British writing (the field in which she earned her PhD); old age and age studies; embodiment; critical theory; metaphorics; narrative training for health professionals; and interdisciplinarity. Dr. Charise is currently at work on a book entitled "Aging, Population, and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination", which explores how the invention of population in the early 19th century impacted broader cultural conceptualizations of older age. In addition to receiving recognition for her teaching and scholarship in literature (most recently, the 2014 Polanyi Prize for Literature), Dr. Charise has had a productive career as a medical researcher (geriatrics, clinical epidemiology). She is an Associate Researcher on Concordia University’s Aging+Communications+Technologies (ACT) Project (a seven-year, $2.99 million SSHRC Partnership Grant), serves on the International Health Humanities Network (IHHN)’s International Advisory Board, and is one of four founding Executive Committee members of the Modern Languages Association (MLA)’s brand new Forum on “Medical Humanities and Health Studies”. Dr. Charise welcomes inquiries from students and colleagues interested in the interdisciplinary conceptualization of health and illness, especially arts- and humanities-based methods, theory, and creative practices (e.g., literature, film, visual arts). She can be found online at www.andreacharise.com or on Twitter as @AndreaCharise.

Research Interest

Health humanities and humanistic approaches to health, illness, and the body; English literature (emphasis: the nineteenth-century British novel); old age and age studies; narrative medicine and training; literary and critical theory; embodiment; science and literature; medicine and literature; interdisciplinarity