Susan Parenti

Susan Parenti's Key Accomplishments Include...

Susan Parenti is a touring performer, writer and collaborator with Dr. Patch Adams of the Gesundheit Institute. An expert on social change, and a passionate advocate for living a life of joy, Susan is also involved in Music and Medicine Project; The Art of Wellness; the Wellness of Art; Health Care Fantasy; The Psychobiology of Health and Wellbeing; Creating a Healthier Macomb; Healing Arts Festival, Washoe Hospital Group, Reno, Nevada; Speakers' Forum, Clark College; Community Quest Conference Health Care Forum. Susan is the author of three books: The Politics of the Adjective 'Political', "I" and My Mouth and Their Irresistible Life in Language, and Playing Attention to Language. Susan is currently co-writing a book with Patch Adams called "The Politics of Care".

More About Susan Parenti...

Susan received her masters and doctorate degree in musical arts (DMA) from the University of Illinois, and her bachelors degree from Northwestern University. After studying for two years in Rome, Italy, at the l'Academia di Santa Cecilia she became a composer as a profession.

However, Susan does not only compose music. Studying cybernetics and whole-systems-thinking with engineers, software designers, and anthropologists such as Herbert Brun, Heinz von Foerster and Humberto Maturana, Susan uses compositional thinking in the medium of sound and of society. This means that in addition to composing pieces for chamber music ensembles, she also composes schools, projects, and approaches to thinking.

Susan is a teacher and organizer of the School for Designing a Society in Urbana-Illinois, a 2 year program for college-age students where compositional ideas are used in relation to social change. She has been a guest teacher at some of the most progressive schools in the United States and Europe: Evergreen College in Washington, Bard, Bennington, Oberlin, New College in Florida, Virginia Beach, Oklahoma State as well as on the faculty at the University of Illinois, teaching the innovative freshmen "Discovery" course. Susan has taught at Schumacher College in England, and at the Gesammtehochschule in Kassel, Germany.

In 1993, Susan started to lecture and collaborate with Patch Adams, while still teaching full-time at the School for Designing a Society.

Suggested Programs   

-Politics of Care; Desire and Design; Performance in Everyday Life

-Living a Life of Joy; Care--a New Cry for Revolution

-Making Yourself Intentional and an Instrument of Joy; Designing Not Resigning--How to Change Health Care Delivery; Have You Considered "Thinking"?

-Patch Adams and Our Gesundheit Hospital Fantasy