Speaking about pain, music, and medicine.

Politics of the Prescription Pad welcomes Will Sheff of Okkervil River to Brown University.

On Saturday, September 14 from 4-6pm in Sayles Hall at Brown University, on the main green, 81 Waterman St. Providence, RI.

Register for free tickets in advance on Eventbrite. Tickets will be available at the door too!

Over the course of his career, Will Sheff has released ten albums that have given the front man of esteemed indie rock band Okkervil River a reputation as one of the greatest working songwriters in the country. As Sheff and his shifting lineup of players have traveled the world many times over, they’ve made fans ranging from Lou Reed to Barack Obama. Praised as “One of indie rock’s most ambitious thinkers” (Pitchfork), Sheff released his debut solo album ‘Nothing Special’ in 2022 to critical acclaim from The New Yorker, NPR, Uncut, Pitchfork and more…with The New York Times saying it “Harnesses both the glow of poetry and the gravity of hymns.”

This public conversation on music and medicine is organized by the Politics of the Prescription Pad, a working group on pain management as a cultural process supported by a faculty seed grant from the Pembroke Center at Brown University.

As doctors, poets, musicians and scholars, we study the problem of representing pain, and the mix of social and emotional elements that constitute pain and how we deal with it.

Speakers will include music critic Tim Page, geriatrician Julio Defilo oncologist, Fred Schiffman and oncology fellow William Page of Brown University, anthropologist Sarah Williams of the University of Connecticut, medical humanities scholar Kim Adams of Wheaton College.