Transdisciplinary lecture series examines new field

Embodying the medical humanities
Transdisciplinary lecture series examines new field

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

To foster cutting-edge research in the emerging field of the medical humanities, Rice and the Menil Collection are bringing expert perspectives to Houston through the second Biennial Menil/Rice Lecture Series. Speakers at “Museums and the Medical Humanities: The Arts of Transformation” are exploring a nexus of themes concerning embodiment, creativity, trauma, diagnosis, medicine, healing, reflection and transformation.

	MARCIA BRENNAN

The series features four lectures — two in the fall and two in the spring. Alexander Nemerov, professor of art history at Yale University, will deliver the second talk of the fall, “The Body of the Second World War: Now.” In his lecture, Nemerov will consider the ways in which society, as a body, simultaneously grieves and heals, remembers and forgets.  The talk will be at 7 p.m. Nov. 6 in Herring Hall, Room 100.

The lecture series represents a unique opportunity to foster creative collaboration between Rice, the Texas Medical Center and the Houston Museum District. 

ALEXANDER NEMEROV

“Medical humanities is a field of multiplicity; it is not about one thing, but about many things at once,” said Marcia Brennan, associate professor of art history and chair of the 2008-09 lecture series. “There is a fine — and sometimes, indistinguishable — line between the physical and the metaphysical, between art, spirituality and medicine; a fine line between academics, museums and hospitals.”

In the series’ first lecture, held Sept. 20, Yale University art history professor Robert Farris Thompson discussed objects resembling those in the Menil Collection — wooden effigies embedded with nails or spikes that might appear just to be a work of art to a passerby, but whose history shows a much deeper purpose, one reflecting the absorption of hardships and the internalization of power. Thompson, who has devoted his life to the study of the art and culture of the Afro-Atlantic world, explained that the object also has a healing purpose, in giving form to hardship and turning it into strength.

	ROBERT FARRIS THOMPSON

“When thinking about the connections between these subjects, I had a flash of insight as to how these ideas work together, conceptually and linguistically,” Brennan said. “Namely, I realized that the words ‘cure’ and ‘curate’ share a common root, as both terms descend from the Latin ‘curatus’ which designates a person who has the cure or care of souls. Moreover, these terms apply to a curate, or a clergyman in charge of a parish; a curator, or someone who has the responsibility for a museum or art gallery; and individuals such as physicians who administer cures, or substances relating to recovery or relief from disease. At the deepest levels of thought and language, a common thread unites those who cure and those who curate. In all instances, we’ve entered the domain of the caregivers.”

Much of Brennan’s research focuses on the representation of the human body in modern and contemporary art, particularly with regard to abstract painting. She also studies the various ways the body is visualized within the museum, and comparatively, within health-science contexts.

BARBARA MARIA STAFFORD

“The body is not constant,” she said. “The body is a constantly fluid cultural and historical construction.”

Brennan said that a recent trend in body representation is the virtual body, which can be seen in games that use avatars or even the symptom-checker on WebMD.

“What we think of when we think about the body tells us a lot about our culture. It has societal implications,” Brennan said. “For instance: What is the pregnant body? Is it one body or two? Where does one body begin and one body end?

	RICHARD TUTTLE

“The body is also the body politic, and thus, a larger cultural abstraction,” she said. “And through the lecture series, we’re looking at how such abstractions become solid, and how we can make fixed ideas conceptually fluid once again.”

The “Museums and the Medical Humanities” series will also present two lectures in the spring of 2009: “Positive Art and Positive Healing” by the prominent contemporary artist Richard Tuttle and “The Slow Conscious Look: Toward a Pedagogy of Attentiveness” by art historian Barbara Maria Stafford of the University of Chicago.

Initially organized in 2006 as a collaborative venture between the Menil Collection and the Department of Art History, the lecture series is part of a larger campus initiative to link Rice with neighboring cultural institutions. The lectures at Rice University are made possible through the generous support of Rice alumna Suzanne Deal Booth.

All lectures are free and open to the public. For information, call 713-348-4276 or visit http://arthistory.rice.edu/events.cfm.