Maura Spiegel

Specialization:  Contemporary fiction and film, film theory; narrative theory; history of the emotions, 19th-century British novel, Narrative Medicine. 

Professor Spiegel writes on literature, film, social history and narrative medicine.  She is the author of Sidney Lumet: A Life (St. Martin’s Press); she co-authored The Theory and Practice of Narrative Medicine (Oxford University Press); The Grim Reader: Writings on Death, Dying and Living on (Anchor/Doubleday), and The Breast Book: An Intimate and Curious History (Workman), which was a Book-of-the-Month Club Quality Paperbacks selection. She edited and introduced new editions of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes for the Barnes & Noble Classics Series.  With Rita Charon, MD, PhD, she edited the journal Literature and Medicine (Johns Hopkins University Press) for seven years.  She has written for The New York Times and Newsday and has published articles on the history of the emotions, Charles Dickens, Victorian fashion, diamonds in the movies, among many other topics.  She is currently writing a book on the films of Lumet for Columbia University Press; she is Co-Director of the Narrative Medicine track at Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, where she offers film courses to medical students.