Dr. Darian Goldin Stahl, a 2021 Banting Postdoctoral Fellow with UNBC started a project for Northern and Interior BC residents who deal with illness or disability to communicate their experiences.
The project, titled “Embodied Books: Binding Together Illness, Art, and Learning”, will help participants create artists’ books through workshops so that Stahl can then take them and teach medical students about the experience of medicine through a patient’s eyes.
“The artistry that can be incorporated into this medium goes far beyond a typical book, from collage-making to print art or paintings and so much more,” said Stahl.
“The format of an artists’ book really lends itself to a narrative that can incorporate not only text or images but also sensory aspects such as touch and smell. It can become this amazing archive of experience held within a mobile book form.”
Stahl has a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in printmaking and has a Ph.D. in humanities.
“There can often be an overreliance on formally published narratives and I’m interested in representing patients whose stories are left out, perhaps because they cannot provide a coherent description of their experiences,” said Stahl.
“Artists’ books offer an opportunity for anyone to be able to tell you their story, in a way that doesn’t rely on words whatsoever but on other sensory ways of communication,” she added.
The Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship program gives 70 fellowships $70,000 a year for two years and is designed to attract top-of-the-class researchers.
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