LibGuides: Health Humanities: Speaking of Health

Speaking of Health is a Health Humanities book and speaker series launched in 2022 with generous support from the South Dakota Humanities Council, the USD Sanford School of Medicine, and Wegner Health Sciences Library. See below for information about our past and upcoming events. All events are free and open to the public.

Upcoming events

When: April 25th, 2025, 12:00-1:00 PM (Central Time)

Where: Zoom (register and join at the link: https://usd.zoom.us/j/91491904918)

Who: China Scherz (Author), George Mpanga (Author), Sarah Namirembe (Author)

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. A print copy is available for check-out at Wegner Library.

Higher Powers draws on four years of collaborative fieldwork carried out with Ugandans working to reconstruct their lives after attempting to leave behind problematic alcohol use. Given the relatively recent introduction of biomedical ideas of alcoholism and addiction in Uganda, most of these people have used other therapeutic resources, including herbal aversion therapies, engagements with balubaale spirits, and forms of deliverance and spiritual warfare practiced in Pentecostal churches. While these methods are at times severe, they contain within them understandings of the self and practices of sociality that point away from models of addiction as a chronic relapsing brain disease and towards the possibility of release. Higher Powers offers a reconceptualization of addiction and recovery that may prove relevant well beyond Uganda.

Past events

With support from the Center for Family Medicine and the University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine Office of Graduate Medical Education, we welcomed Achut Deng at Wegner Library on July 18, 2023.

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