Superbugs

The University of Nebraska at Omaha and the KANEKO welcome bestselling author Matt McCarthy for the fall season of our newest core literary series, PASSAGES. Pivoting off of topics from his recent bestseller Superbugs, McCarthy and a panel of local educators, medical professionals, writers, and ethicists will gather to discuss the writing process, medical ethics and how our public institutions are serving us. The event will be held at the KANEKO, Tuesday, October 8th at 7pm. 

The appearance of Dr. Matthew McCarthy is underwritten by the University of Nebraska at Omaha College of Arts & Sciences, with assistance from the University of Nebraska Medical Center Office of Academic Affairs. Additional sponsors include the UNO College of Communication, Fine Arts and Media, and UNO Medical Humanities.

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

About PASSAGES: PASSAGES is the core literary program at KANEKO that seeks to intersect and expand all offerings and forms of creative literary activities across the Omaha-Council Bluffs Metropolitan area. Passages programming includes critical readings, interactive writing workshops and sessions, and events featuring accomplished and diverse authors.

About Matt McCarthy: McCarthy is the author of the national bestsellers,The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly and Odd Man Out as well as his most recent book, Superbugs. He is an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell and a staff physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where he serves on the Ethics Committee. His work has appeared inSports Illustrated, Slate, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Deadspin. He reviews nonfiction for USA Today and is editor-in-chief of Current Fungal Infection Reports.

About the Panelists 

Amy Haddad: Amy Marie Haddad, PhD, MFA, RN is Professor Emerita in the School of Pharmacy and Health Professions at Creighton University. Her academic publications include: Health Professional and Patient Interaction (8 th ed., Elsevier, 2014) with Drs. Ruth Purtilo and Regina Doherty, Case Studies in Pharmacy Ethics (3 rd ed., Oxford University Press, 2017) with Drs. Robert Veatch and E.J. Last and Case Studies in Biomedical Ethics – Decision-Making, Principles, and Cases (2 nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2014) with Drs. Robert Veatch and Dan English. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in the American Journal of Nursing, Fetishes: Literary Journal of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Janus Head, Journal of Medical Humanities, Touch, the Bellevue Literary Review, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Persimmon Tree.

Jacob Dahlke: Jacob Dahlke is a clinical ethicist and the Director of the Office of Healthcare Ethics at Nebraska Medicine in Omaha, NE. Jacob is a graduate of the Bioethics Program at Union Graduate College – Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and has additionally contributed to the medical ethics field in Vermont, Colorado, and at Creighton University’s Center for Health Policy and Ethics. Jacob’s primary interests in bioethics include advance care planning, LGBTQ+ and feminist ethics, and healthcare professional wellness as it relates to moral distress and moral injury. 

Joseph McCaffrey: Dr. Joseph McCaffrey is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and a member of the Medical Humanities Faculty. His research interests lie in the philosophy of neuroscience/cognitive science, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind. McCaffrey is interested in epistemological issues in cognitive neuroscience (particularly neuroimaging), and in how empirical approaches such as cognitive psychology and neuropsychology can inform traditional issues in the philosophy of mind. He is currently working on how functional localization can succeed in complex systems like brains (or gene networks), whether neuroimaging experiments can be used to test psychological theories, and whether brain research compels a revision of psychological kinds, a movement known as “cognitive ontology revision” in the neuroscientific literature.

McCaffrey has broad teaching interests in the philosophy of neuroscience/cognitive science, moral psychology, philosophy of the biomedical sciences (bioethics, neuroethics, philosophy of psychiatry, etc.), philosophy of biology, and ethics. Prior to joining the University of Nebraska at Omaha, he was a postdoctoral fellow in Washington University in St. Louis’ Department of Philosophy and Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program. McCaffrey completed his Ph.D. in the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science in 2016.