About the Talk:
In this talk, we’ll explore how modern medicine can offer remarkable cures while often lacking the ritual, honor, and sense of the sacred that help us make meaning of illness, suffering, and death. What can the hospital’s history—and its connection to pilgrimage—teach us about restoring meaning to the bedside? Pilgrims at the Bedside examines the sacred roots of modern medicine and how hospitality, ritual, and meaning can enrich the experience of both patients and caregivers.

About the Speaker:
Margaret Wardlaw is a pediatrician and sleep medicine physician, educator, and a prize-winning essayist. She received her MD and PhD in the Medical Humanities from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Her research interests include religion, spirituality, childbirth, disability studies, medicine as religious practice, sleep medicine, and pediatric palliative medicine. In addition to presenting nationally and internationally, her writing has appeared in Guernica, Plough, Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, Religion and Medicine, The Persisting Osler, and The American Journal of Bioethics. Her essay, "Monsters," which received a Pushcart Prize, is the winner of the grand prize in the National Science Foundation's "Dangerous Creations" project for the bicentennial of Frankenstein.