Improving Cancer Therapy with Storytelling

This coming Sunday, September 13th we are pleased host Dr. Joseph Sobol of ETSU Storytelling Program. The topic is unusual and fascinating.

Dr. Sobol is part of a group at ETSU that recently received a $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for studying the use of story-telling as a means of enhancing the treatment for cancer. This unusual approach seems immediately to be potentially brilliant and ground-breaking. Dr. Sobol is the group's expert on storytelling. In the upcoming Adult forum, he will give us his perspective on this fascinating topic.

Here's a synopsis of his presentation:
"For six years Dr. Joseph Sobol of the ETSU Storytelling Graduate Program has been working with a group of oncologists, family medicine specialists and qualitative researchers to write a major grant on the uses of storytelling in medical communication. We have recently received funding for the project, which is already underway. Dr. Sobol will speak about storytelling as a research methodology as well as a tool for enhancing empathy in the medical system."

Dr. Sobol's Bio:

"Storyteller, musician, folklorist, and author Joseph Daniel Sobol is an artist of wide-ranging accomplishments. An artist-in-residence for many years in North and South Carolina, he received a Masters in Folklore from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. He toured the country from 1994 through 1999 with his award-winning musical theatre piece In the Deep Heart's Core based on the works of Irish poet W. B. Yeats. His book on the American storytelling revival, The Storytellers' Journey, was published in 1999 by the University of Illinois Press. In addition he has released a cassette and three CDs of music and stories, alone and with his group Kiltartan Road. His most recent recording, Citternalia: Celtic Music for Cittern was honored with a "Homegrown CD Award" by Acoustic Guitar Magazine, which called the album "a watershed project--dazzling speed and precision." After eleven years in Chicago, Illinois, doing folklore residencies with high school ESL and multilingual programs and performing regularly with some of America's top Irish traditional musicians, he is proud to have been named Director of the Graduate Program in Storytelling at East Tennessee State University (www.etsu.edu/stories)."

Please join us on Sunday morning at 9:45. We'll be glad to have you.