Words in the In-Between, a Creative Space (93)
Tracks
Track 2
| Tuesday, April 21, 2026 |
| 10:20 AM - 10:50 AM |
| 50 Sussex, Main Gallery |
Overview
Dr. Marlene Kadar
Details
Learning Objectives: Critically reflect on how viewing artistic and scholarly works influences their understanding of patient, clinician and community identities.
Speaker
Dr. Marlene Kadar
Professor Emerita and Senior Scholar
York University
Words in the in-between, a creative space
Abstract
Performance Section
Writer and Patient
Marlene Kadar, Professor Emerita and Senior Scholar, York University
I propose 3 short readings from "Broken Fiction," a book of auto fictional pieces that necessarily perform the in-betweenness of compromised identities scaled by lurking compromised immunities. I like to think they negotiate between the world of the well and the world of the unwell.
My performance is based on a journey from good health to poor health, from an identity as a professor and scholar of Life Writing to a new identity as an unwell person on permanent disability. The nadir came in 2012 with a diagnosis of “suicidal itching disease,” or Dermatitis Herpetiformis, a severe skin reaction to gluten—predominant in certain ethnic groups. DH is a risk factor for blood cancers.
Two blood cancers followed in 2013. Follicular Lymphoma: stage four, slow growing but incurable. Two months later: Aggressive B-Cell Lymphoma and fast-growing tumors. In half the cases it is curable.
In 2020, during the pandemic, Squamous Cell Carcinoma arrived. It stole a tear duct and later, the V2 nerve. Surgical traces now decorate a new face: multiple surgeries, chemotherapies and radiotherapies break identities even as they reinvigorate them.
In 2024, both lymphomas are in remission, and SCC is stable, but the thesis remains: memory holds and shapes the plodding rhythm of recurrence, delay and medical error in poetic terms. It moves between and in between images of illness and anguish, and back to a compromised identity that crashes while it negotiates difficult knowledge. The irony is that a patient’s shifting identities cannot wait for patience.
Readings: “Ode to a Node”; “Salvage”; “Changing the Subject”
Writer and Patient
Marlene Kadar, Professor Emerita and Senior Scholar, York University
I propose 3 short readings from "Broken Fiction," a book of auto fictional pieces that necessarily perform the in-betweenness of compromised identities scaled by lurking compromised immunities. I like to think they negotiate between the world of the well and the world of the unwell.
My performance is based on a journey from good health to poor health, from an identity as a professor and scholar of Life Writing to a new identity as an unwell person on permanent disability. The nadir came in 2012 with a diagnosis of “suicidal itching disease,” or Dermatitis Herpetiformis, a severe skin reaction to gluten—predominant in certain ethnic groups. DH is a risk factor for blood cancers.
Two blood cancers followed in 2013. Follicular Lymphoma: stage four, slow growing but incurable. Two months later: Aggressive B-Cell Lymphoma and fast-growing tumors. In half the cases it is curable.
In 2020, during the pandemic, Squamous Cell Carcinoma arrived. It stole a tear duct and later, the V2 nerve. Surgical traces now decorate a new face: multiple surgeries, chemotherapies and radiotherapies break identities even as they reinvigorate them.
In 2024, both lymphomas are in remission, and SCC is stable, but the thesis remains: memory holds and shapes the plodding rhythm of recurrence, delay and medical error in poetic terms. It moves between and in between images of illness and anguish, and back to a compromised identity that crashes while it negotiates difficult knowledge. The irony is that a patient’s shifting identities cannot wait for patience.
Readings: “Ode to a Node”; “Salvage”; “Changing the Subject”
Biography
A scholar of Life Writing across the disciplines, and an auto/fiction writer and literary editor. My focus has been on global issues of trauma and violence in diverse languages in war, the Holocaust, the Porajmos and other expressions of difficult knowledge including my own troubled diagnoses and consequent health circumstance/s..
COI Disclosure: I do not have an affiliation (financial or otherwise) with any for-profit or not-for-profit organizations
COI Disclosure: I do not have an affiliation (financial or otherwise) with any for-profit or not-for-profit organizations
