The University of Lynchburg’s 2022 Zaidee Creel Williams Memorial Lecture will feature Dr. Raymond Barfield, a writer and pediatric oncologist, who will present “Why Storytelling is the Heart of Great Medical Practice.” The event is free and open to the public and takes place at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 21, in Schewel Hall’s Sydnor Performance Hall.
“I’m so excited that Raymond Barfield is coming to our campus because his abilities, interests, and knowledge bring together the different corners of our campus like few other speakers can do,” Chair of Religious Studies Dr. Amy Merrill Willis said.
“In much the same way, his lecture title promises to bring together things that we don’t normally put together. Students, faculty, and community members who come to his lecture will most certainly find something surprising, compelling, and important in what he has to say.”
During his visit, Barfield, who has taught medical and theology students at Duke University, will spend time with Lynchburg’s undergraduate students in the School of Humanities, as well as graduate students in the PA Medicine Program.
Barfield is the author of four books of philosophy. “The Ancient Quarrel Between Poetry and Philosophy” and “The Poetic Apriori: Philosophical Imagination in a Meaningful Universe” are part of his ongoing quest to understand what imagination can show us about the universe and ourselves.
In the other two — “Wager: Beauty, Suffering, and Being in the World” and “The Practice of Medicine as Being in Time” — he attempts to understand what suffering can teach us and figure out how to be a good doctor.
Barfield also has published one novel (“The Book of Colors”) and two books of poetry (“Life in the Blind Spot” and “Dreams and Griefs of an Underworld Aeronaut”).
According to his website, Barfield is often “humbled and astonished” by the stories his patients and their families tell him while they “find their way through really hard stuff.”
Zaidee Creel Williams ’24 was a lifelong educator. Following her death in 1987, her family decided to honor her memory by endowing a lectureship in the area of religious studies. Since the inaugural lecture in 1989, the Zaidee Creel Williams Lectureship has enabled the Department of Religious Studies to bring exciting, dynamic scholars in the field of religious studies to the University, enriching the intellectual life not only of the campus but the community at large.
