Charlotte Duffee

The Historiography of Suffering

• • The state of the art of suffering in the history of medicine and adjacent historical subfields, as well as exchanges between them.

  • Different methodologies for historicizing suffering. 

Intellectual and Cultural Histories of Suffering in American Medicine

• •  The intellectual and cultural history of suffering in 20th-century American medicine, with a special focus on bioethical and medico-legal theories of suffering.

Histories of Suffering in Western Thought

• • Using digital humanities tools and more traditional methodologies to recover concepts and moral values of suffering across different versions of the Western canon. 

  • The intellectual history of suffering in normative ethics, with a focus on the traditions of deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics.

The Relationship Between Disciplines

• The upshots historians and philosophers might reasonably expect from each other's research--and the dangers that come with attempting to reap those benefits.

• How to achieve effective interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly for projects that engage slippery concepts like suffering.

• Interdisciplinary collaborative tools, especially in the digital humanities.

Philosophical Implications of My Historical Research

• Grounding in historical context various philosophical positions on the nature of suffering, as well as its distinctness from related experiences such as pain.

• Applying the historical findings from my studies of suffering in Western thought and ethics to current disputes over the assessment (especially measurement) and treatment of suffering.

Additional Work:

•  The following philosophical aspects of suffering: distinctions between pain and suffering; discrepancies between pain science and bioethical/medical theories of suffering; the satisfactoriness of these theories; and whether suffering from disease or injury can be ennobling.

• Definitions of moral injury, distress, and moral distress.