Art and Medicine

Catalog description

This course focuses on artists who explore and employ medicine in their work. Possible images for analysis include works by Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Eakins, and Hannah Wilke, as well as visual depictions of world health crises in the media. Students will look at how a broad range of artists has envisioned medicine, disease, and deviance, and their related dialogue with constructions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. The course will encourage students to think critically about the many intersections between art and medicine throughout history. It also will touch upon how medical professionals are increasingly receiving art history training and why. The chronological parameters of the course will vary according to who is teaching it.