Robert E. Bjork

Writing courses in American medical schools

U.S. medical schools were surveyed to determine the extent and nature of instruction in medical writing. Of the 101 schools responding, only 15 offered writing courses. Seven of the 15 offered only brief seminars or workshops. The other eight offered full-term courses (greater than eight weeks or more than 15 hours of instruction). Those not offering courses indicated a need but claimed lack of time, lack of interest on the part of those needing instruction, or lack of qualified faculty members as major reasons for not having the courses. These obstacles can be overcome by designing the writing course to complement existing elements of the curriculum and by soliciting the help of writing specialists on campus.

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, 2011: The CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching Medieval Studies

The recipient of the 2011 CARA Award for Excellence in Teaching Medieval Studies is Howell D. Chickering.

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America, 2011: The Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies

One of the great historical enterprises of modern scholarship on the Middle Ages is the edition and publication of works of medieval philosophers and theologians. Unlike the great nationalist-inspired projects like the Monumenta Germaniae Historica or the Rolls Series or the well-defined projects of the Maurists and Bollandists, the editors of the great medieval thinkers usually labor alone or in small teams dependent on small government grants or the wavering sponsorship of religious or national organizations. And there is much to do given how few medieval theological works exist in adequate critical editions, even for such central figures as Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham. Rescuing and making accessible the monuments of medieval philosophy has been the life work of Girard J. Etzkorn, professor emeritus of the Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University, for which the Medieval Academy of America is honoring him with the 2011 Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Stu...

The Old English Verse Saints' Lives: A Study in Direct Discourse and the Iconography of Style@@@Fifty-Six AElfric Fragments: The Newly-Found Copenhagen Fragments of AElfric's 'Catholic Homilies'. With Facsimiles

Critics have traditionally treated the Old English poems about saints as individual, autonomous works, relating but little to one another except in a broadly generic way. Bjork challenges the traditional view with an examination of the major structural feature that all the poems share: direct discourse.Syntactical and rhetorical analyses of the five poems reveal a consistent use of spech in creating stylistic norms or ideals - stylistic icons - in spiritually perfect figures. In all the poems the speech of the saints in formal, rhetorical, and balanced, the stylistic analogue both of their immutable fith and of the Christ-saint figural connection. The speech of all other characters is measured against this standard; their ability or inability to meet the saintly ideal in language reflects their level of spiritual awareness.The consistency with which these patterns appear sheds new light on the conventions of Old English poetic hagiography.

Language and the healing arts: some recent texts on medical writing

Medical and scientific writing have traditionally occasioned debate. The earliest critics of scientific language were harsh because they were promoting a plain style of writing free from rhetorical embellishment, not because they questioned the writing ability of those they censured. Writing and language were central parts of scientific inquiry. Modern critics are likewise frequently harsh and derisive, but they have lost sight of the integrated approach to language and science that their predecessors had. This article examines three texts published within the last ten years that seem to reverse some trends in medical writing. Tapping non-scientific fields from philology to aesthetics to composition theory, these texts suggest ways in which the humanities can be reintegrated with the study of medical and scientific writing.