An Evening with the Humanities

Introduction:

This session explores Vonnegut’s 1968 play, Fortitude, through a dramatic reading and panel discussion, livestreamed from the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Indianapolis, the city where Vonnegut was born and raised. The play presents a futuristic scenario in which a woman is kept alive as just a head on a tripod, manipulated by machines being controlled by a physician mastermind. Following the reading, there are reflections by three panelists from the hosting institutions meant to stimulate discussion of the play’s themes, including the purpose of medicine and ethical issues at the end of life and the role of the history of medicine and literature in framing these sensitive and important conversations.