An agenda-setting volume of essays on the contribution that art can make to our understanding of health and illness has been published, co-edited by Dr Fiona Johnstone from our Institute for Medical Humanities and School of Modern Languages and Cultures.
Art and the Critical Medical Humanities explores how art practice and art-history can be used to address new questions about structures and experiences of health, medical knowledge, care, therapy, clinical research and education.
The multi-format volume contains 29 contributions from more than 40 artists, art historians, and scholars in a range of in countries, and spans artworks from the sixteenth century to the present day.
Art as research method
The role of art and artists in medical education and therapy, and in communicating the findings of health research, is well-established.
Art and the Critical Medical Humanities sheds new light on art's role as a powerful research tool, illuminating complex links between health and race, gender, class, sexuality and disability.
Dr Fiona Johnstone, Assistant Professor of Visual Medical Humanities, said: "Art can make a vital contribution to interdisciplinary health research. By approaching art practices as methods of critical thinking, these essays showcase the generative potential of art in raising, re-evaluating and responding to pressing issues of human health experience.
"With a commitment to creative boundary crossing, the volume will appeal not just to artists and art historians, but to all medical humanities scholars invested in innovative interdisciplinary work."
Professor Angela Woods, Director of our Institute for Medical Humanities, remarked: "Art and the Critical Medical Humanities is a work of global significance, animated by lively writing, sumptuous and intriguing images, and novel scholarly formats.
"The essays in this collection will, I am certain, stimulate new ways of thinking and working across art practice, art history and the critical medical humanities".
Professor Janet Stewart, Executive Dean of our Faculty of Arts & Humanities, said: "This extraordinary volume makes a compelling case for the transformative value of art and humanities scholarship.
"Drawing across chronologies and geographies, it mobilises art's histories and practices to generate new knowledge about health and illness, and what it means to live well as a human being."
World leaders in visual medical humanities
Fiona leads The Visual and Material Lab in our Discovery Research Platform, which examines what can happen in health research when art and visual culture is taken seriously as a starting point.
The publication consolidates Durham as a world-leader in visual medical humanities, and in interdisciplinary and cross-sector approaches to the study of health and human experience.
Art and the Critical Medical Humanities is published by Bloomsbury Academic. It is edited by Fiona Johnstone, Allison Morehead from Queen's University in Canada, and Imogen Wiltshire at the University of Lincoln.
