October Narrative Medicine Rounds with Rachel Somerstein

For our October rounds we are honored to welcome Rachel Somerstein, writer, editor, associate professor of journalism, and researcher of maternal health, reproductive rights, gender and work, who will be speaking about her recent book, Invisible Labor: The Untold Story of the Cesarean Section. 

In Invisible Labor: The Untold Story of the Cesarean Section, Somerstein weaves personal narrative and investigative journalism with medical, social, and cultural history to reveal the surprising evolution of the cesarean section, from its early practice on enslaved women to its excessive promotion by modern medical practitioners. In the United States, one in three babies is born via C-section, a rate that has grown exponentially over the past fifty years. While in most cases the procedure is safe, it is not without significant, sometimes life-changing consequences, many of which affect people of color disproportionately. Invisible Labor lifts the veil on C-sections so that people can make choices about pregnancy and surgical birth with greater knowledge of the risks, benefits, and alternatives.

Rachel Somerstein is a tenured, associate professor of journalism at SUNY New Paltz who researches visual culture and collective memory, focusing on how the mass media amends, edits, and circulates photographs and television programming about the past. She takes a longitudinal approach to this work, looking through electronic and print archives to see how the mass media's version of a given history has changed over time. Her work has appeared in publications including the Boston Globe, the Washington Post. the Guardian, Longreads, Journalism, ARTnews, Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Guernica: A Magazine of Art & Politics, n+1, and Wired.

Rachel Somerstein will be in conversation with Dr. Christopher Travis, MD, MS, an alumnx of the Columbia Narrative Medicine masters program and Assistant Professor and Assistant Education Director for Narrative Medicine in the Department of OB/GYN at University Hospitals/Case Western Reserve University who utilizes the teachings of Narrative Medicine within his clinical practice.

Narrative Medicine Rounds are monthly rounds held on the first Wednesday of the month during the academic year, hosted by the Division of Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Rounds are supported by live captioning. If you have any other accessibility needs or concerns, please contact the Office of Disability Services at 212-854-2388 or disability@columbia.edu at least 10 days in advance of the event. We do our best to arrange accommodations received after this deadline but cannot guarantee them. A recording of our Virtual Narrative Medicine rounds is available following the live session on the Narrative Medicine YouTube channel, and you can watch other recent Rounds events there.