The Prairie Landscape

People Involved: Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Healthcare®

Literature & Medicine Facilitators

Chicago:

  • Dr. N. Gulsat Aygen is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics in the English Department at Northern Illinois University. She holds an M.A. in Linguistics from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Harvard University. Her undergraduate studies were at the Cerrahpaşa Medical School at Istanbul University, and Boğaziçi University, where she received a BA in Western Languages and Literature. Dr. Aygen has served as an instructor and language consultant to business, and has taught at Reed College and Harvard. She has published numerous works on linguistics topics and has also translated works from Turkish to English. She is currently preparing books on linguistics and Kurdish grammar for publication.
  • Dr. Geraldine Gorman is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She holds an M.A. in English Literature and a Ph.D. in Nursing, both from Loyola University, Chicago. Before coming to UIC in 2002, she taught at Western Michigan University. Prior to entering the nursing profession in 1991, she taught writing as a teaching assistant at Loyola University. She also worked in direct social services, living in community at the Little Brothers of the Poor and participating in all aspects of their service to low-income elderly, including meal delivery, relocation services, and holiday and vacation celebrations. In this capacity she also facilitated poetry workshops in nursing homes, resulting in two small anthologies of collected work. She was a founding member of a small grass roots organization in Tempe, AZ, which served the needs of the many relocated elderly and she organized the local university community to provide, among other services, respite care for the spouses of Alzheimer victims. Before beginning nursing school, Gerry served as the volunteer coordinator and editorial assistant to H.O.M.E, a nonprofit housing organization for Chicago’s low-income elderly.
  • Dr. Mary Ann McDermott is Professor Emeritus of the Niehoff School of Nursing of Loyola University in Chicago. She holds an M.S.N. from Loyola in Maternal-Child Health Nursing and an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Supervision from Northern Illinois University. Over the last two decades, her teaching and nursing focus has been in parish nursing, health ministry, and using the arts as a morale and enrichment strategy for professional caregivers. She is the founder and President of the Nurses and Humanities group at the Hektoen Institute of Chicago, and was Illinois Nurse Leader of the Year in 2002. Dr. McDermott has published numerous articles and presented widely, both in the U.S. and abroad, in her areas of focus.
  • Deva R. Woodly is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of Chicago. Her areas of concentration are American politics and political theory. She holds a B.A. with honors in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia, and an M.A. in Social Science from the University of Chicago. She has published articles examining the place of discourse in democracy and has presented at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association and the Midwest Political Science Association. She has been a facilitator for the Justice Talking and Public Square programs of the Illinois Humanities Council, and has also worked with the Southside Arts and Humanities Network in Chicago.

Dekalb:

  • Dr. Amy K. Levin is director of the Women's Studies Program and Professor of English at Northern Illinois University. She studied Victorian and women's literature at Harvard University, the University of Colorado, and City University of New York. Her third book, Defining Memory: Local Museums and the Construction of History in America's Changing Communities , came out in the spring of 2007. Currently, she lives in Wheaton and is completing a book on how museums construct narratives about culture. She has worked with the Illinois Humanities Council since 1996, as a leader of teacher seminars, a member of its speakers bureau, and a facilitator of Literature & Medicine groups.

Glenview:

Winfield: