John Mulligan's blog

Dr. Zoë Wool's new piece for Somatosphere

John Mulligan — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 19:08:27 +0000

Doctor Zoë Wool, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and a leader in Rice's Medical Humanities program, has published a new, multimedia piece for the online scholarly journal, Somatosphere.

Wool's piece, "Homunuculus Revolts: Re-Figuring the Neurological Subject," introduces readers to a curiously persistent figure in medical literature, the "little man in the brain" who represents both the universal structure of the brain and at the same time the violent underside of biomedical research. Wool shows how the insistence on normative bodies both produces and flees from its opposite in the stretched and dismembered visualizations of the brain's relationship to our anatomy as a whole.

Her essay closes with a case study that reminds us of the importance of such representations: an Irish woman who was essentially tortured to death by a physician both fascinated with a tumor in her head and convinced of her biological inferiority.

The article is available online at Somatosphere.org: https://humanities.rice.edu/academics/programs/medical-humanities/faculty-spotlight/zoe-wool

Putting South Asia on Display at the British Museum: September 25th Lunch

John Mulligan — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 19:04:42 +0000

Jean Jacques Lequeu: The architectural imagination in the Age of Reason

John Mulligan — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 19:00:20 +0000

Barry Bergdoll Lecture
Menil Drawing Institute (1412 W. Main Street, Houston, TX)
Thursday, November 14, 2019
7:00 p.m.

Professor Barry Bergdoll will present a lecture on the occasion of the exhibition, Jean-Jacques Lequeu: Visionary Architect, Drawings from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, on view at the Menil Drawing Institute October 4, 2019 – January 5, 2020. Draftsman and architect Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826) left a corpus of drawings to the Bibliothèque nationale de France that had been largely forgotten until the publication, in 1953, of Emil Kaufmann’s influential essay "Three Revolutionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux and Lequeu.” Since then, Lequeu’s work has been associated with the radical geometric abstraction of the more famous architects Claude Nicolas Ledoux and Etienne Louis Boullée, as well as with a genealogy of modernism. This trio was further consolidated in an important exhibition in Houston in 1967-68 supported by the Menil Foundation titled Visionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux, Lequeu. While these publications and exhibition made famous an unknown figure's spectacular and fantastic drawings, they created a set of associations that have obscured the difficult task of relating this work both to the world of the late 18th and early 19th century France and to the puzzling private universe of the draftsman. In this lecture, Bergdoll will suggest trajectories for reading and understanding Lequeu's place in the history of Enlightenment and Romantic architecture.

Barry Bergdoll is a specialist in late 18th and 19th century French and German architecture, and the author of numerous works on the period, including the textbook European Architecture 1750-1890 in the Oxford History of Art series. He is Professor of Art History at Columbia University and former Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art.

This lecture is organized by the Menil Collection in partnership with Rice University’s Humanities Research Center, Rice Architecture, and Rice Design Alliance.

This program is free and open to the public; limited seating is available on a first-come first-serve basis. Further information regarding accessibility and parking can be found here.

Alt-Ac Fellow Elena Valdez Co-Curates Latina/o Exhibit

John Mulligan — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 22:59:51 +0000

"The Art of Children's Illustration: 25 Years of Piñata Books."

We are proud to announce that on Saturday, February 2nd at 12:00pm, an exhibit of illustrations for Latina/o American children's books will go on display at the historical Julia Ideson building's beautiful second-floor gallery. The exhibit was co-curated for Arte Público Press and the Houston Public Library by Elena Valdez, our 2018-19 alt-ac fellow. Elena is currently finishing her Ph.D. in the English department.

Below is an excerpt from Elena's introductory remarks for the opening event:

When I combed through the boxes of illustrations at Arte Público Press, I began thinking about the role illustrations play in children’s literature and how visual art functions as a powerful educational tool.

Some of the illustrations and prints made me recall a trip to my mother and father’s favorite restaurant when I was about seven or eight years old. The restaurant catered to working class families like mine. It was small and a little shabby, but it was the kind of place where you could get pozole with menudo anytime of the year for a reasonable price and you’d run into at least one person you knew every time you visited.

This one particular trip, we sat at a table pushed up against a wall. Hanging on the wall and to my left, just above eye-level, was a large poster. From far away, the poster looked like a portrait. There was a huge face of a man with black and white hair who reminded me of one of my uncles. Up close, I could see the face was made up of what looked like hundreds of smaller people, some holding picket signs in their hands. I became interested in the image immediately, and so I asked my parents who the person in the picture was supposed to be.

“That’s César Chávez,” my mom said. “He was a very important man. He helped a lot of people. He helped the farmworkers.”

This of course led to a conversation about farmworkers, that is, what they do and why they needed help. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that poster, which I later learned featured the work of Octavio Ocampo, introduced me to a facet of American history that I would never hear about at school, at least until I went to college.

All these years later, the memory of the conversation that image created between me and my parents stuck with me. I think this is because the image contributed to my historical knowledge and cultural literacy and, most importantly, it the discussion it sparked was part of a process wherein I learned people like César Chávez are important. Farmworkers are important. People like my mom and dad are important, and I am important. This is exactly the kind of work the visual arts are capable of doing for people of all ages, especially for children.

Thankfully, for 25 years now, we’ve been able to expect this kind of generative experience from Piñata Books. Through bilingual narratives and engaging illustrations, Piñata Books provide young readers with opportunities to see more nuanced representations of themselves, or their neighbors, in similar ways. The original illustrations and prints on display provide an opportunity to think about the role visual culture plays in storytelling, particularly for telling stories that are sensitive to unique cultural experiences and diverse histories.

Conversation with Kirsten Ostherr on The Exam Room Podcast

John Mulligan — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 17:49:58 +0000

Dr. Kirsten Ostherr, MPH, founder of the Medical Futures Lab and head of the Medical Humanities program at Rice, speaks with Bryan Vartabedian, MD, on The Exam Room podcast, for an interesting discussion on everything from human centered design in health care to medical education and e-patients. As a Professor of English and one of digital health’s most interesting anti-disciplinary thinkers, this episode is just plain interesting and will hopefully inspire you to think outside the confines of your silo.

Click through to listen to the discussion.

Medical Humanities Practica Students Take RURS Top Prizes

John Mulligan — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 02:11:18 +0000

At the 2018 Rice Undergraduate Research Symposium (RURS), Miriam Shayeb and Sarah Lasater took home the top awards in undergraduate humanities research. Miriam and Sarah's presentations were condensed versions of the work they presented as part of their final projects in the HRC's practica courses, as part of its medical humanities programming.

Miriam, who became President of the Rice Medical Humanities Club in Fall 2018, conducted her first research practicum as a freshman in the HRC's inaugural semester of the program (Spring 2016), under a public humanities grant funded by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation. Her work that semester the letters of Kezia Payne DePelchin, held in the Rice Fondren Library's Woodson Research Center, produced two excellent treatments of the complex interactions of disease, shifting race relations, and the professionalization of nursing in the postbellum South: Unsung Requiem: African-Americans in the Mississippi Valley Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878-1879 and A Mission of Mercy: Nursing in the Mississippi Valley Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1878-1879. In the Summer of 2017, she returned to her interest in the historical and regional analysis of public health, as the HRC's first medical humanities Summer practicum student. Miriam worked, in this practicum, with resources at the Texas Medical Center's McGovern Historical Collections relating to Dr. Joseph Jones, the postbellum president of the Louisiana State Board of health. Miriam's presentation of her final paper, "A Regional Affliction: a Portrait of Dr. Joseph Jones in the New South," won her the award for Excellence in Research in the Humanities at the 2018 RURS competition. Abstract:

Southern history has painted a critical portrait of Dr. Joseph Jones, president of the Louisiana State Board of Health from 1880-1884, whose controversial opinions on quarantine and the federal government served as the source of intense conflict between the national and state boards of health. Dr. Jones’s scholarship and advocacy for local and national public health improvements evolved during his career. His regional gaze, which heavily influenced and skewed his work toward improving the public health and public image of the South, gradually eroded as the necessity for effective national health regulation usurped regional authority in the New South. In the years after his term, Jones recognized the devastating effect of split authority on effective regulation and called for comprehensive national regulation of quarantine. Jones’s evolving perspective on federal authority and disease prevention mirrors the regional debate on federal health regulation amidst national conflict over local interests, regional emphasis, and the authority of a New South in the postbellum United States.

Sarah's work began in the Summer of 2017, in a Summer Medical Leadership internship fellowship she was awarded through the HRC, funded by a grant from the Doerr Institute. Working at Baylor College of Medicine, under the guidance of Jennifer Christner, the Dean of the School of Medicine, she helped a team of researchers prepare for a study of community needs, to inform potential changes to the medical curriculum. Sarah's final summer research paper explored the nature of medical leadership in a changing professional climate: Horizontal Leadership in the Evolving Physician Profession. Her work with Dean Christner's team continued into the 2017-18 Academic Year as a research practicum, during which time she helped the team to conduct field interviews on what community stakeholders believed doctors should learn in the course of their medical education. Her final presentation at RURS in May 2018 was titled, "An Inclusive Care Model: Education, Horizontal Leadership, and Holistic Care." Abstract:

The growing number and diversity of pressures placed on physicians are challenging their positions as, in the words of Paul Starr, the “sovereign” leaders of healthcare; the response to these pressures requires a reassessment of the profession and an evaluation of how the pre-corporatized physician-patient model fails in the current health care environment. An "inclusive model" that integrates key adjacent care players might better serve both physicians and patients. It might mitigate the time-restricting, autonomy-withdrawing effects of initial corporatization by bolstering holistic care and preserving physician autonomy through "horizontal leadership" of care teams—where physicians take a step back from the traditional perception of their profession as sovereignty and step forward in their allying with and understanding of different adjacent groups that affect a patient's care. These theories connect to my research project currently underway at Baylor College of Medicine, which capitalizes on horizontal leadership and holistic care, and envisions new feedback and clinical models by considering other perspectives in medical school curriculum development.

2017-18 Alt-Ac Fellow Peter Zuk

John Mulligan — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 16:19:13 +0000

Peter Zuk, our alt-ac fellow for the 2017-18 academic year, had an incredibly successful collaboration with Baylor College of Medicine in which he contributed directly as a medical ethicist to two important initiatives. His work in the alt-ac program helped him to think about a broad range of possible applications for his philosophy PhD, which he will defend in September.

In Peter's words, "The HRC’s generous support has enabled me to embark on new research trajectories in data ethics and neuroethics at Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy. I am applying my theoretical training in philosophical ethics and social-political theory as a member of two project teams: Building the Medical Information Commons and Neuroethics of aDBS Systems Targeting Neuropsychiatric and Movement Disorders. The first of these projects investigates empirical and ethical dimensions of large-scale medical data-sharing. The second investigates ethical aspects of next-generation deep brain stimulation treatments for depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette’s syndrome, Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor, and other disorders. These opportunities have allowed me to contribute to collaborative, interdisciplinary work on medical humanities topics of public concern with a focus on stakeholder attitudes, as well as to develop my own independent lines of normative inquiry on these topics.

Rachel Conrad Bracken, HRC Medical Humanities Graduate Fellow, Wins Teaching Award

John Mulligan — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 16:32:13 +0000

Rachel Conrad Bracken, a PhD candidate in Rice's Department of English, has been awarded the Center for Teaching Excellence's Graduate Student Instructor Award for 2017, for her First-year Writing Intensive Seminar, "Science/Fiction and the Future of Medicine."

Bracken is a graduate certificate student with the Center for Critical and Cultural Theory, the Center for Teaching Excellence, and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her research explores the intersections of American literature and public health history, uncovering how community is biologically constituted through the spread of contagion, defined by epidemiological records, governed through public health policy, and discursively produced across genres. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities, Big Data and Society, English Language Notes (ELN), and the edited collection Transforming Contagion: Risky Contacts among Bodies, Disciplines, and Nations (Rutgers UP, 2018).

Bracken's medical humanities teaching at Rice has also included early additions to the medical humanities minor, "Literature and Medicine," and her Fall 2017 course, "Invalid Women: Writing and Resisting Representations of Women's Illness," which was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation under the HRC's Public Humanities initiative. Her public humanities work for this course extended beyond the classroom, with the course's capstone "Take Back the Mic" event, a public poetry reading featuring four Houston women poets: Maria Palacios, Traci Lavois Thiebauld, Analicia Sotelo, and current Houston poet laureate Deborah "DEEP" Mouton.

Congratulations to Rachel for her excellent work as an engaged scholar instructing in the medical humanities at Rice.

HURC 306 Lecture Topics, Fall 2017: The History and Culture of Disease and Healing Seminar Series

John Mulligan — Mon, 17 Jul 2017 16:15:52 +0000

The Humanities Research Center and Rice's Medical Humanities program is thrilled to be running, this Fall semester, its second iteration of the Health and Humanities Master Class. This course presents weekly lectures by medical humanities researchers from the UT School of Public Health, the American Psychological Association, UT Health Science Center, and Rice University at the Health Museum. These lectures will be eligible for continuing medical education credits for health professionals through UTHealth; combined with seminar discussions, they form Rice's HURC 306/506 course, which counts towards the medical humanities minor.

Lectures take place on Tuesday evenings (5:30pm), with seminar-style classroom discussions for Rice students on Thursday afternoons (1:00-1:50pm). Below, please find the lecture dates, titles, speakers, and topics. Please email john.mulligan@rice.edu with any questions.

The History and Culture of Disease and Healing Fall 2018 Seminar Series
presented by UTHealth School of Public Health, Rice University and The Health Museum

Click for directions to the Health Museum

Theme: Poison, Plague, Potions and Portrayal
Seminars Dates: 8/29/2017 – 11/29/2017

8/29/2017
Chip Carson, MD, PhD
UTHealth School of Public Health - Southwest Center for Occupational & Environmental Health Associate Professor and Program Director of Occupational and Environmental Medicine Residency
Presentation Title: Lessons learned from the history of industrial medicine
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to: (1) List historical turning points leading to improved workplace health and safety, (2) explain the linkage between disaster and progress, (3) recognize warning signs in public health.

9/5/2017
Clint Wilson III, MA, MSc
Rice University, PhD Candidate in English
Presentation Title: Toxic Agents: Poetry, Pollution, and Environmental Racism
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) understand how early twentieth-century artists understood “toxicity,” (2) grasp the interconnectedness of toxic exposures across the century, (3) engage with ideas of environmental racism that enabled the Flint Water Crisis and (4) explore how patients and victims of toxic exposure see their condition via major lead poisoning case study.

9/12/2017
Mary Ann Smith, PhD
UTHealth School of Public Health – Southwest Center for Occupational & Environmental Health, Assistant Professor in Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Science and Associate Dean of Students
Presentation Title: Panacea or Poison? A brief history of remedies and good intentions gone bad
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) describe how the FDA came into being and (2) give examples of remedies/drugs that caused unintended effects.

9/19/2017
Philip Lee Montgomery, MLIS, CA
Texas Medical Center Library, Head of McGovern Historical Center
Presentation Title: Quack medicine: selling hope for profit and glory
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) understand the concept of quack medicine in an historical context by examine artifacts and related health claims and (2) examine how the intersection of science and culture fosters opportunities for individuals to exploit health-related fears for profit and personal aggrandizement.

9/26/2017
Kirsten Ostherr, PhD, MPH
Rice University, Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English
Presentation Title: The Evolving Role of Patients in the New Sharing Economy of Medicine
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to: (1) identify three inpatient or outpatient settings in which patients and clinicians can partner to improve patient care, (2) identify three actions patients can take to partner with clinicians and (3) identify three actions clinician can take to partner with patients.

10/3/2017
Robert Emery, DrPH, CHP, CIH, CBSP, CSP, CHMM, CPP, ARM
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Vice President for Safety, Health, Environment & Risk Management, Professor of Occupational Health, UTHealth School of Public Health, Co-Director of the Prevention, Preparedness and Response (P2R) Academy
Presentation Title: Strategies for Correcting Health & Safety Misinformation
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) define “misinformation,” (2) understand why the issue is crucial to the health profession, (3) discuss strategies or techniques to correct misinformation and (4) access key references for this topic.

10/17/2017
Judith Roof, PhD
Rice University , Professor of English, Williams Shakespeare Chair of English
Presentation Title: Reading the Signs of the 1918 'Spanish' Influenza
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) describe and identify the different actors (U.S. government, army, medical professionals, citizens) who influenced the public discourse during and on the 1918 influenza and (2) analyze the discursive tactics of various media (advertisements, news reports, government issued warnings) published during the 1918 influenza epidemic. This lecture allows medical professionals to examine the often disastrous effects of the conflicting messages in public discourse during the 1918 influenza, and the continuing confusion the interplay of government, medical, and public knowledge can cause in contemporary health crises.

10/24/2017
Catherine Troisi, PhD
UTHealth School of Public Health, Associate Professor of Management, Policy and Community Health, and Epidemiology
Presentation Title: A History of Polio Virus Disease: Pools, Pioneers and Paradoxes
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) describe the epidemiology of polio, (2) summarize the effects of polio disease om mid-twentieth century USA, (3), understand challenges in eradicating polio and (4) describe the current state of the polio eradication campaign.

10/31/2017
Melissa Bailar, PhD
Rice University, Professor in the Practice of Humanities and the Associate Director of the Humanities Research Center
Presentation Title: The War on Rats: (Mis)representing the Bubonic Plague
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) know the history of the 1920 Galveston plague and (2) understand how representations of the plagues affect patient care and health protocols.

11/7/2017
Doug Tynan, PhD, ABPP
American Psychological Association, Director of Integrated Health Care
Presentation Title: ADHD in Kids & Dogs: Shall we medicate the terriers?
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) recall the history of the diagnosis of ADHD over the past 50 years, (2) comprehend the development of brain structures over time and its relationship to ADHD, (3) recall the ontogeny of activity level over the first 10 years of life, (4) appreciate the environmental context of the ADHD diagnosis.

11/14/2017
John Mulligan, PhD
Rice University, Lecturer, Humanities Research Center
Presentation Title: Hooked: Measuring Addictive Pleasure from Romanticism to Neoliberalism
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) provide a brief history of attempts to quantity addictive pleasure, from 1800 to the present, (2) understand critical frameworks that resent this drive to quantification as culpable in what we call "addiction” and (3) explore an alternative, non-pathologizing perspective on quantified pleasure, derived from aesthetic theory.

11/21/2017
Els Woudstra, MA
Rice University, Graduate Student, Department of English
Presentation Title: From Sainthood to Sickness: The Medicalization of Anorexia
Description: At the end of this session, attendees will be able to (1) analyze how popular and medical texts have historically represented and interpreted self-starvation, and list the process of its medicalization from the 17th century to today and (2) address the religious/mystical myth-making surrounding anorexia by medieval saints and contemporary on line 'pro-ana’ communities. This session provides physicians (and other attendees) the opportunity to become familiar with the historical background of the 'modem' disease of anorexia, and through its early religious interpretation and process of medicalization to gain a better understanding of the roots of the medicalization of anorexia, as well as the myth-making surrounding anorexia by members of online pro-eating disorder or 'pro-ana' communities.

11/29/2017
Niki Clements
Watt & Lilly Jackson Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies
Presentation Title: Medicalizing Melancholia: the Noonday Demon from Antiquity to the Present
1. To summarize a brief history of the treatment of depression (as melancholia), from antique philosophy to contemporary pharmacology.
2. To critically analyze the construction and perception of mental illness as specific to cultural context (as well as neurobiological phenomena)
3. To apply this historically-informed understanding of modern stigma in clinical settings to provide better care to patients with mental health issues

Two Medical Humanities Podcasts

John Mulligan — Thu, 18 May 2017 18:25:03 +0000

The Medical Humanities program at Rice is invested in bringing humanistic research on health to publics in and outside the medical field. Medicine, and our broader conceptions of health, are important domains of inquiry and discussion for both healthcare professionals, patients, and people who aren't currently patients (but all of us likely will be some day). The medical humanities' public mission can be an important bridge between these different population, providing physicians with new perspectives on their profession; patients with tools for understanding the systemic character of health, disease, and healthcare institutions; and the public as a whole with frameworks to facilitate debate, discussion, and interpretation.

Two podcasts released this Spring showcase the public-intellectual work of medical humanists at Rice. The first is an interview-based audio essay on Disorders of Consciousness, researched and produced by Julia Jung, a student in the HRC's undergraduate research practica program, who worked at the Institute for Spirituality and Health in the Fall semester. This topic area grows out of the Institute's research into end-of-life treatment and doctor-patient-family conversations, which Rice medical humanities students have assisted with in the past.

Julia spent the semester helping the ISH team to explore how spiritual discourses are operative in patients' families' expressions of what is happening to their non-responsive loved ones, and how a better understanding of these frameworks might facilitate medical conversations about what is important and what is possible. Addressing this problem with communication and understanding is crucial: misdiagnosis and substandard care are systemic issues for patients with disorders of consciousness, as Julia points out. Fusing metaphor theory with the latest understanding of the medical phenomenon, and interviewing physicians and scholars of religion, she offers some new ways for doctors and families to think through and talk about this problem. The audio essay is featured on the ISH's Spirit Matters podcast.

The second is an interview of Kirsten Ostherr, director of Medical Humanities at Rice as well as the Medical Futures Lab, given to the media and design podcast, Medea Vox. The interview's occassion was Dr. Ostherr's paper, delivered at the K3 research seminar at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University in Sweden, titled "Where is the Human in Digital Health Technology? Experiments at the Medical Futures Lab."