Health Humanities Consortium Conference 2025

Catacombs of Science: Human Remains Collections in the 19th Century and Today

Wednesday, April 2, 5:30-8 p.m.

5:30-6:30 p.m. - Check-in and reception with private museum access

6:30-8 p.m. - Lecture and conversation with Q&A

Location: The Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 19 S. 22nd Street, Philadelphia, 19103

Note: Allow 30 minutes walking time, or 20 minutes via public transit or ride share, for travel from the Jefferson campus to the Mütter Museum. 

Join us for our opening event at the iconic Mütter Museum with historian Samuel J. Redman, who is best known for his work on the history of museums, especially the history of anthropology and archaeology. In his keynote lecture, Redman will address how human remains became highly sought-after artifacts for both scientific research and public display, as well as the ongoing and changing nature of museums, which he explores in his books Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (Harvard University Press, 2016) and The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience (NYU Press, 2022). Following Redman’s presentation, a conversation with Mütter Museum Executive Director Kate Quinn and Monica O. Montgomery will highlight insights from Postmortem: Redefining Respect, Reinterpreting Remains, an ongoing special project on the complex ethical questions surrounding medical museum collections, care, consent, interpretation and display. 

Betadine Drawing Workshop with Dominic Quagliozzi

Thursday, April 3, 12-1 p.m.

Location: Jefferson Alumni Hall Atrium

In this hands-on artmaking workshop accompanying artist Dominic Quagliozzi’s solo presentation, Corporis Fabrica, currently on view in Helix Gallery (Hamilton building lobby), guests will create drawing collages from a selection of artist materials and medical materials common to Quagliozzi’s artistic practice: graphite, colored pencils, watercolor paper, tape, Betadine (povidone iodine). Through themes of vulnerability, personal introspection and concealment/exposure guests will be prompted to reflect on a memory where they have felt vulnerable, either physically or emotionally, and make a drawing, write a blurb or poem about that experience. After the drawing is made, instruction will lead them to conceal that personal anecdote with a dark staining ink-like Betadine antiseptic solution. Quagliozzi is a multidisciplinary artist and arts educator. His work explores chronic illness and disability through his lived experience with Cystic Fibrosis and as a recipient of a double lung transplant in 2015. He received an MFA in Studio Arts from Cal State University, Los Angeles, and has exhibited nationally and internationally. 

Reception at the Museum of the American Revolution

Thursday, April 3, 6:30-8 p.m.

Location: 101 S. 3rd Street, Philadelphia, 19106

Note: Allow 20 minutes walking time, or 15 minutes via public transit or ride share, for travel from the Jefferson campus to the Museum of the American Revolution.

Join us for a social gathering at a Philadelphia treasure, the Museum of the American Revolution in historic Old City! Connect with fellow attendees over hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar to explore this fascinating museum. Highlights include Washington’s War Tent, a unique theatrical presentation (7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.) of the remarkable journey of General George Washington's headquarters tent from the Revolutionary War to the present. 

Michelle Browder: Mothers of Gynecology

Friday, April 4, 12-1 p.m.

Location: Jefferson Alumni Hall Atrium

For nearly 35 years, artist and activist Michelle Browder has used art, history, and “real talk” conversations to mentor marginalized and disfavored students through visual arts and spoken word. She has created and branded art diversion programs used by juvenile detention centers in Atlanta, Georgia and Montgomery, Alabama. Michelle is the founder and director of the I AM MORE THAN... Youth Empowerment Initiative located in Montgomery, Alabama, and the founder of More Than Tours, a social enterprise providing transformative tours of Alabama. Michelle is dedicated to transforming narratives surrounding maternal and women’s health by leveraging art, history, and bold discussions from a woman's viewpoint. She is the artist, sculptor, and creator of The Mothers of Gynecology Monument in Montgomery, Alabama. Browder’s monument reclaims the history of the enslaved Black women–Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy–who underwent medical experimentation by physician J. Marion Sims in the late 1840s. Browder’s work has been featured in and on PBS News Hour, Washington Post, Montgomery Advertiser, Partners In Health, American Medical Association, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, ACOG Medical Journal, National Geographic, and New York Times.

Following her presentation, Michelle will take part in a conversation with moderator Paul Farber. As Director and Co-Founder of Monument Lab, Paul Farber is among the nation's thought leaders on monuments, memory, and public space. Farber is author and co-editor of several publications including his forthcoming book, After Permanence: The Future of Monuments (University of North Carolina Press). Farber is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a PhD from the University of Michigan. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Wednesday, April 2  

Block A | 2-3:15 p.m.

Hamilton 208/209

Drawing Observations in Medicine: Perspectives from a Prolonged, Protected Exposure to Art in Medical School 

Jesse Koskey, Temerity Bauer, Laura Ferguson, Tanya Gill, Vesna Jovanovic, Carlos Scott Lopez 

Hamilton 505

Cleaning in the House of Healing

Teya Sepinuck, Gloria Monson 

Curtis 213

Enhancing Medical Education through Formal Analysis in Art History

Siobhan Conaty, Angela Choe, Kathryn McGillen

Pursuing Excellence in Health Care: Using 4th-century Wisdom to Transform 21st-century Medicine

C. Phifer Nicholson, Jr.

The Community of Healing: Jane Austen to Now

Shwetha Bindhu

JAH 307

The Politics of Evidence in Gender-Affirming Care: Making and Unmaking Transgender and Gender-Diverse Patients as People

Elizabeth Dietz, Laura Stamm, Jacob Moses, Ahona Shirin

Block B | 3:45-5:00 p.m.

Hamilton 208/209

"Supposed to be murdered:" Kevin Young's poetic "Autopsy" of Crispus Attucks

Melissa Tuckman

New Words, Same Stigma: The Euphemism Treadmill in Medical Language

Adina Wise

Addressing Gaps in Health Equity: An Environmental Scan of Indigenous Mental Health and Addictions Services

Ravneet Nagra

Rhythmic Scrubs: The Role of Dance in the Medical Curriculum

Julia Baran

Writing Against Othering in Health Humanities Research

Brianna August-Rae

“Narrative Toolbox”: Applying Narrative Medicine to Neurosurgical Setbacks

Rachel Sturley

Medicine at the Margins: Piloting a Health Screening Program for Muslim Refugees

Bilal Rehman

Hamilton 505

Picturing Art and Medicine

Rika Burnham, Bill Perthes, Craig Blinderman

Curtis 213

From Concept to Print: Shaping Health Humanities with the Connective Tissue Book Series

Renee Nicholson, Katie Rhine, Derek McCracken

JAH 307

Healing Aided by Creativity: Delivering Bedside Arts Programming While Navigating the Organizational Infrastructure at a Large Healthcare Institution

Robin Anderson, Ariel Boswell, Scott Breitinger, Sarah A. Mensink

Thursday, April 3 

Block C | 8:30-9:45 a.m. 

Eakins Lounge

How are you doing, really? Museum spaces, vulnerability, and the art of imperfection

Jay Baruch, Jane Hesser, Alexandra Poterack and Lauren Allister

Hamilton 505

“Catapulted Into the World of the Ill:” Crafting Performance Autoethnography

Katherine Burke

BLSB 105

Exploring Arts-based Social Wellness with Queer of Colour Youth in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada: A Mixed-Methods Study

Andrea Charise, Keith L. Cheng, Dirk J. Rodricks

Establishing an international collaboration for museum-based medical education

Nazanin Moghbeli

Healthcare Standard for Federal Prisoners: Examining the Eighth Amendment and Principle of Equivalence of Care

Francesa Jereis 

BLSB 107

Physician and Daughter - One or Both?

Grace Ro

Little Invisible: On Imaging and Imagining Expectancy

Emily Waples

Papatūānuku (Earth Mother) is Sick

Melody May

Block D | 10:15-11:30 a.m.

Eakins Lounge

Writing Critical Institutional Histories of Medicine

Bryan Stringer, Jessica Adler, Claire Clark, Vanessa Northington Gamble 

Hamilton 505

Penning Prayers for Healing: Integrating Spiritual Care into Holistic Health through Expressive Writing

Lenny Grant

BLSB 105

Dance Rx: Sweating the Shaping Influence of the U.S. Health Industry on the Working Lives of Artists

Sarah Wilbur

Intimate Revelations: Portraying the Therapist-Patient Relationship in Graphic Memoirs

Nels Highberg

Stigma and Storytelling: How Graphic Narratives Humanize Abortion

Kate Lafferty Danner

BLSB 107

From the Story to the Ecosystem: Integrating the Health Humanities into Interdisciplinary Case-Based Learning

Cora Fox, Annika Mann 

Reflections on the Clinical Encounter: The Medical Student Lens

Patricia Luck

Where Ideology Meets Health: A Critical Constructivist Analysis of How the WHO Has Legitimized Global Health Inequity Since 1948

Roberta Chardulo

Block E | 1-2:15 p.m. 

Eakins Lounge

Healing Through Pottery: Introduction to Mindfulness Practices through Tactile Art for Healthcare Workers

Madelyn Quinn

Hamilton 505

Violent Medicine: Reading Bodies and the Historical Stakes of Dehumanization 

Melanie E. Gregg, Hailey Haffey, Samantha Chipman

Curtis 218

The Material Culture of Modern Bodily Regimes: Institutional Engagements with Health and Healing in the United States

Elizabeth Lee, Julia Rosenbaum, Jennifer Way

BLSB 107

Medical Writing as a Healing Institution: Patient Advocacy through Scientific Publication

Lenny Grant

Daily Grind: A Creative Reading About Spaces of Community Care  

Teresa Milbrodt

How to Heal: A Poetry Reading

Maya Sorini

Block F | 2:45-4 p.m. 

Eakins Lounge

UNRULY: Reclaiming Black Women's Bodies Through Poetry and Testimony

Antoinette Cooper 

The Politics of (Translating) Henrietta Lacks

Haejoo Kim

Examining the Past: The Struggle for Racial Equity at the University of Rochester Medical Center

Wendy Gonaver

Hamilton 505

Sharing Self, Seeing Others: The Power of Narrative Medicine in Medical Education

Amanda Caleb, Suchismita Datta, Kamna Balhara

Curtis 218

An Oscar Shortlisted Film’s Mission to Make Better Doctors

Randi Rader, Jen Rainin

BLSB 107

Drawing to See: Drawing as a Tool to Build Observational Skills

Susan Dodge-Peters Daiss

Comics from the Frontlines of Abortion Care

Brian Callender, Michael Green 

Building Cures: How Hospital Designs Have Healed (And Should Again)

Meggie Crnic

Block G | 4:30-5:45 p.m.

Eakins Lounge

Navigating Futures Through Storytelling: Tracing the Impacts of Healthcare Systems in Disability Narratives

Ella Patrick

Hamilton 505

Using Narrative to Teach About Dementia

Erin Gentry Lamb, Liz Bowen, Jessica Howell, Rebecca Garden

Curtis 218

Death Panels: Exploring Dying and Death Through Comics

MK Czerwiec, Brian Callender

BLSB 107

Transhumanist Cyborgs in Sherri Tenpenny’s Vaccine Hesitancy

Katherine Shwetz

Using Storytelling to Enhance Cultural Health Literacy of College Students in Humanities Courses

Maria S. Rankin-Brown

A grassroots response to address health humanities needs in Undergraduate Medical Education

Phoebe Cunningham 

Friday, April 4

Block H | 8:30-9:45 a.m. 

BLSB 101

Eating disorders and exclusion: how diagnosis, treatment, and research are shaped by whiteness

Gloria Fall

The Capsule: Fostering Community Through Health Narratives

Serena Bhaskar

On Page: Poetry in Conversation Throughout Intern Year

Anneka Johnston

Building Bridges: Photovoice as a Methodology for Caring with Others

Courtney Tyler

An Art and Storytelling Activity for Epilepsy Monitoring Unit Patients

Sujal Manohar 

SHH: Students Paving the Way

Faith Chadwick, Alexis Nguyen

Chronic Illness and Medical Errors: Lessons from Patient Narratives

Nafisa Hussein

BLSB 105

Epidemics, Health Disparities, and Racial Justice

Abi Stephens, Kalimah Ibrahiim, and Robin McCrary

Hamilton 505

Ethical Medical Practice Through Theater

Joelle Roberston-Preidler

Block I | 10:15-11:30 a.m. 

BLSB 101

Teaching and Learning through the Arts in Medical Education—An Interdisciplinary Roundtable

Joanna Chan, Julia Clift, Josh Robinson, Elizabeth Spudich, Teresa VanDenend Sorge, Megan Voeller

BLSB 105

Elective Psychiatric Disability in Narratives of Treatment Refusal

Julia Knopes

The Rise of Climate Anxiety and Physician Advocacy

Sara Press

Healing in the Gallery: Exhibit Curation in an Undergraduate Health Humanities Course

Jess Libow, Jasmeen Basra, Olivia Davis, Yarra Ellett

BLSB 107

Novel Approaches to Public Health: Literary Constructions of Biopolitical Management

Lorenzo Servitje, Rachel Conrad Bracken, and Matthew Reznicek

Hamilton 505

Humanities in Medicine: The Impact of Art on Medical Education

Harini Venkataganesh

Bridging Health Humanities and Clinical Practice in Pediatric Advocacy

Samantha Tsang

How can natural history museums reconcile an imperial past and provide humans a healing connection to nature?

Nina Stoyan-Rosenzweig

Detransition narratives: Positioning care as an institution of harm

Bryce Ross

Out of the hospital, in and with the community: mural discussions as spaces for community building and medical education

Erin O’Callaghan

From Sanctuary to Surveillance: Fear of Police as a Barrier to Medical Care

Jessica L. Olivares

Block J | 1:30-2:45 p.m. 

BLSB 101

Blurring boundaries through improv and theatre in healthcare education and practice

Kathleen Van Buren, Kit Kough, Tane Danger, Jessica Koball, Bob Hyde, Luqman Ellythy, Sarah Mensink

BLSB 105

Humanities in Medical Education: The Institutional Challenges of Critical Medical Humanities

Bernice L. Hausman, Nancy E. Adams, Katharine Dalke, Priscilla Song, Britta Thompson, Rebecca Volpe

BLSB 107

Medical Student Musician Collaboration with the Ben Taub Cupcake Man Project

Jessica Fan, Madeline Blum

Living Through Literature: Translational Skills in an M4 Course on Memoirs of Dying, Death, and Grief

Brooke Kowalke

The Hidden Heartbeat of Health Justice

Nargish Patwoary

Assessing Medical Students' Readiness to Discuss Spirituality with Patients

Sarah Stevens

Holistic Elements of End-of-Life Decision-Making in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit

Gwendolyn Richner, Daniel Grossoehme, Sarah Friebert, Michael Forbes, Christopher Page-Goertz, Miraides Brown, Julie Aultman 

Collaborative Charting: A Method to Combat Stigmatizing Language in Medical Records

Akshaya Ramakrishnan

Hamilton 505

Institutionalizing the Parallel Chart: From Narrative Medicine Innovation to Required Clinical Experience

Margaux Danby, Claire Clark, April Hatcher, Raven Piercey 

Decolonizing Asylum Medicine: the Ethics of Representation in Forensic Medical Affidavit Writing for Asylum Seekers

Alexandria Yap

Premodern Culture and the Ethics of Institutionalized Care

Kate Crassons

Block K | 3:15-4:30 p.m.

BLSB 101

Bridging Paradigms: The role of Kuhnian incommensurability in complementary and alternative medicine and allopathic medical education

Tony Kim

Alzheimer's Disease and Environmental Injustice: Using Humanities to Illustrate Social and Health Inequities

Keisha Ray, Omar Hasan

Lost in Translation: Strategies to integrate health humanities into clinical education experiences in rehabilitation sciences

Michele “Shelly” Lewis, Sarah Blanton

BLSB 105

Camden Faith and Mental Health Work Group: Working with Healing Institutions in Urban Communities

Abyson Kalladanthyil, Lindsey Nguyen

Protecting Vulnerable Patient Populations: The Belmont Report and the Institutionalization of Ethical Research Standards

Kriszta Sajber

Attending to Maternal Isolation: A Narrative Medicine Intervention

Katie Grogan, Annie Robinson

BLSB 107

Reflective Writing as Collective Action

Arielle Levine, Nora O'Neill, Anna Reisman

Hamilton 505

Educator Perspectives on Knowledge, Skills, and Values Components of Medical/Health Humanities Education: Focus Group Study Results

Craig M. Klugman, Erin Gentry Lamb, S. Eli McCormick, Patricia Luck

Block L | 4:45-6:00 p.m. 

BLSB 101

Audre Lorde’s “A Burst of Light:” a Lesson in Chronic Illness, ‘Alternative’ Clinics, and Structural Competence

Wendy Nielsen

Do the health humanities have a place in nursing curricula?

Alicia Kachmar 

Imagining Broader Roles for the Humanities: A New Oral History Training Curriculum to Improve Resident Communication Skills

Britt Dahlberg 

BLSB 105

Self-Diagnosis of Autism in Online Communities

Bilal Rehman

To be a Sick Healer: Stories of Disabled and Chronically Ill Medical Students

MaryElena Sumerau

Dismantling Ableism in Nursing Education through Spoken Word Poetry

Sabrina Jamal-Eddine 

BLSB 107

Care Work as Care Webs: Reimagining care institutions through art making with community-based providers

Rocio Pichon-Riviere, Jennifer Syvertsen, Juliet McMullin, Cynthia Huerta

Hamilton 505

Selling Sanity: Diachronic Explorations of Rhetoric in Pharmaceutical Marketing

Adriana Rodriguez-Alfonso

Investigating the Institutional Dimensions of Autopathographies: The Case of Twenty-First-Century Schizophrenia Memoirs

David Lombard

Confronting Subjectivity: Humanistic Interventions in Psychiatric Education

Akshatha Silas

Saturday, April 5

Block M | 8:30-9:45 a.m.

BLSB 105

Queering the Narrative of Medical Training: Designing a Collective Role-Playing Game as Resistance to Institutionalized Apathy

Seisha Centeno 

Exploring Queer Health Activism through Archival Research

Justin T. Brown, Christine Marks

A Refractory Gaze: The Power of Figurative Painting in Medical Advocacy

Jang Lee

BLSB 107

Narrative Dispossession in Different Facets of Psychiatry

Thomas Nguyen

HAM 224/225

Research in Unexpected Places: Exploring the Role of Place and Relationships in Knowledge Creation

Margaret Flood

HAM 505

Creating community and collaboration across medical institutions: the Philadelphia Medical Humanities Collaborative (PMHC)

Douglas Reifler, Amanda Finegold Swain, Meggie Crnic, Nazanin Moghbeli, Elizabeth Upton

Block N | 10:15-11:30 a.m.

BLSB 105

The “Ribbonification” of Illness: How Awareness Campaigns Shape Public Perception and Healthcare Priorities

Kithmy Wickramasinghe 

Abuses of Power: An Exploration of Health and Healthcare Systems and Drivers to Healing

Bethany Snyder, Sabrina Wicker

Beyond Biomedicine: Transforming Pedagogy to Embrace Diverse Approaches to Health and Healing at a Liberal Arts Institution

Emily Waples, August Bales, Isabella Cambareri, Adam Ellis, Emily Turk, and Hailee Yoshizaki-Gibbons

Strengthening Empathy in Medical Education: Narrative, Reflection, and the Foundations of Humanized Care

Ana Laguna, Eveling Hondros

Narrative Medicine and Simulation for OUD/SUD Care: An Interprofessional, Multiyear Collaboration to Address Health Priorities in Rural and Under-Resourced Health 

Hailey Haffey, Brenda Luther

BLSB 107

Reimagining Institutions: Health Equity for NEET Populations

Kalimah Ibrahiim

To the Rescue:  Early First Responders’ Ambivalent Promise

Alexander Obermueller

“Part of my humanity left me the day I walked into medical school:” Navigating Medical Students’ Identity Dissonance through the Medical Humanities

Samantha Smoger

HAM 505

Shared Vulnerability in Medical Education

Amanda Caleb, Ryan Weber, Gretchen Case, Karly Pippitt

Lunch | 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. 

12-1 p.m. - HHC Business Meeting HAM 505

Our Call for Proposals for the 2025 HHC Conference is now closed. We look forward to welcoming you to Philadelphia in April! 

The Health Humanities Consortium invites proposals for its annual conference on the theme of Healing Institutions.

Our theme highlights the complex and often ambivalent role of institutions—from hospitals and universities to established organizations, customs, laws, practices and people—in health and healthcare. Inviting consideration of institutions as agents of care, the theme also acknowledges their role in exclusion, extraction and injustice. How do institutions function as mediators of health and healing? When institutions have enabled harm, what forms of redress can be brought to bear? How can we reimagine and actualize the institutional change needed to face urgent challenges to health across individual, collective and planetary scales?   

Since the 1960s, the prevailing biomedical definition of health—an understanding of wellness and illness framed in terms of physical disease and its presence or absence—has been called into question. Broader definitions acknowledge the entanglements of body, psyche and society, emphasizing social, structural and cultural drivers of health including marginalization. Current understandings of health consider how social forces materialize in physical and physiological forms across objects, technology, institutions and embodiment. With the conference theme as a springboard and provocation, we invite presentations that explore and rethink issues such as:  

• Key institutions of health and healthcare, from hospitals, insurers and universities to established organizations, customs, laws, practices and people.
• Rhetorics and practices of institutional repair and redress, particularly regarding histories of legally- and socially-sanctioned medical discrimination. 
• Boundaries and borders that mediate institutions, communities and the body.
• Community responses and resistance to institutional power.
• Underrepresented patient, caregiver, worker and learner/trainee voices in health and healthcare.
• Self-institutionalizing projects such as alternative schools and clinics.
• Curricular innovations and reform in health professions education. 
• The Philadelphia community’s historic roots in medicine and the arts and present-day efforts to achieve health equity.

Panels, papers and creative presentations that engage the conference theme are encouraged, but proposals which contribute to the broader project of the health humanities are equally welcome. 

Current HHC Members

In-person Registration 
Individual - $275 
Contingent faculty, independent scholar or registrants with self-identified financial need - $150
Student/trainee - $75

Virtual-only Registration 
Individual - $125 
Contingent faculty, independent scholar or registrants with self-identified financial need - $75
Student/trainee - $50

Non-HHC Members 

In-person Registration 
Individual - $325 
Contingent faculty, independent scholar or registrants with self-identified financial need - $200
Student/trainee - $125

Virtual-only Registration 
Individual - $175
Contingent faculty, independent scholar or registrants with self-identified financial need - $125
Student/trainee - $100

Local (Philadelphia area) resident-day pass

Individual - $25

Jefferson Affiliates (Employees, Students)

Individual - $100*

*Please request discount code from humanities@jefferson.edu.

Where is the conference being held? 

 All concurrent sessions will be held in academic buildings on Thomas Jefferson University’s Center City campus in downtown Philadelphia. The primary building used for the conference will be Jefferson Alumni Hall, 1020 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19107. Sessions will also take place in the Dorrance H. Hamilton Building (1001 Locust Street), Curtis Building (1015 Walnut Street) and Bluemle Life Sciences Building (233 S. Tenth Street). 

Additional off-campus conference events will take place at the Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Museum of the American Revolution.

Who can I contact with questions about accessibility? 

Please email humanities@jefferson.edu, and a member of the Humanities & Health team will respond. 

Where can I park? 

Paid parking is available in multiple garages near the Jefferson campus. Visit this page for a list of garages. 

Where can I find information about public transit? 

SEPTA is the city of Philadelphia's public transit system. The 11th Street/Jefferson station is closest to the conference site.  

Is there a registration deadline?

You may register in advance and on-site for the conference through April 5, but no refunds will be issued after March 21. 

I registered but can no longer attend. How do I cancel my registration?

To cancel, log in to your profile here. Cancellations before March 21 will generate a refund. Late registrations for in-person or virtual attendance cannot be refunded.

I registered in-person, but now I can only attend virtually. Can you refund the difference?

Yes, we can refund the difference if the request comes before (or on) March 21. Please let us know as soon as possible at humanities@jefferson.edu. After March 21, we cannot offer refunds.