Friday, October 12, 2018 
5:30 p.m.–8:30 p.m.
Trustee Center Ballroom, 1 Silber Way

Saturday, October 13, 2018
9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
BU Law School Auditorium and Barristers Hall

For more information and registration

#BUSPHSymposia

Addiction is perhaps the most significant, highly public and intractable social problem of the decade, and it has hit especially hard in Massachusetts. The problems associated with it are complex, and while people from many different fields have weighed in, we see a unique role for the humanities to play in addressing these problems. Historians have written transnational histories of the U.S. drug markets and philosophers have explored the ethical status of addictive states, the moral obligation of societies to those suffering from addiction, and the role that societal structures play in fostering addictive behaviors. But no humanities field has been more directly engaged with the subject of addiction than literary studies. Some of the greatest Anglo-American literature—in memoir, poetic, dramatic, and prose form—is fundamentally concerned with addiction. The humanities fields offer original insights not only into the more obvious social stigma associated with addiction, but the much harder-to-define subjective experience that has such profound implications for treatment and policy. The forum seeks to more fully integrate work by humanists into the thinking of the medical community and governmental officials who are on the front lines in addressing these problems.

Cohosted with Boston University Center for the Humanities.

Friday, October 12, 2018

5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

Opening Round Table Discussion

Introducer: Robert Brown, President, Boston University

Sandro Galea, Dean and Robert A. Knox Professor, Boston University School of Public Health

Samuel Kelton Roberts, Associate Professor of History (School of Arts & Sciences) and Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences (Mailman School of Public Health), Columbia University

Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value, Harvard University

Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse

Moderator: Martha Bebinger, WBUR Health Care Reporter

7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Reception

Saturday, October 13, 2018

9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Morning Panel | The Crisis, Its Internal Language

Introducer: Wendy Gordon, William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, Boston University School of Law

The Role of Personal Narrative in Changing Policy – When Science Is Not Enough

Michael Botticelli, Boston Medical Center Executive Director of the Grayken Center for Addiction Medicine. Formerly Obama’s “drug czar.”

Hurts So Good: Poetry in Response to the Opioid Crisis

Rafael Campo, Professor of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Award-winning Poet

The Role of Storytelling in Addiction Recovery

Eoin Cannon, Chief Speechwriter, City of Boston

Clinical Ethics and Substance Use Disorder: Autonomy, Trust, and Hope

Jessica Miller, Chair, Department of Philosophy and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Interdisciplinary Programs College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Maine

Moderator: Richard Saitz, Professor, Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health and Chair, Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health

12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.

Lunch

1:30 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Afternoon Panel | The Crisis, Its History and Culture

Introducer: James Uden, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Boston University

Democratizing Addiction: The Epic Ambitions of “Infinite Jest” and “Breaking Bad”

Susan Mizruchi, Professor of English, Director of Center for the Humanities, and William Arrowsmith Professor in the Humanities, Boston University

Rethinking Police Work: Non-Arrest Pathways to Treatment and Recovery

John E. Rosenthal, Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors, The Police Assisted Addiction Recovery Initiative and President, Meredith Management Corporation

The International Origins of the US Opioid Crisis

Benjamin Siegel, Assistant Professor of History, Boston University

The Second Arrow: Opioid Addiction and Mental Disorders

Paul Summergrad, Dr. Frances S. Arkin Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, Professor of Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Psychiatrist-in-Chief, Tufts Medical Center, Past President, American Psychiatric Association

Moderator: Amy Appleford, Associate Professor of English, Director, Medieval Studies Program, Boston University