On Friday, October 14, 2016, Jane Thrailkill, HHIVE Lab co-director, visited the Duke Health Humanities Lab to deliver a talk entitled “Empathetics, Inc.” A recording of the talk is now available on YouTube
Thrailkill suggests that efforts to put empathy to use in healthcare has produced a sub-genre of clinical humor that pokes fun at the instrumentalization of feeling. Her talk explored how dark humor, which uses incongruity to point out social and structural absurdities, might serve as a productive mode of cognition and critique, and also a space for essential conversations about burnout, patient care, clinical competence, and compassion.
