September 6, 2023
8:00am – 2:00pm
Visual Histories of Humor and Health: A Virtual Symposium
Register here for this virtual event!
Join us for this virtual symposium exploring visual histories of humor and health, organized by Christine Slobogin, Katie Snow, and Laura Cowley in collaboration with Johns Hopkins's Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine.
These discussions of medically adjacent art will examine the role that visual humor has had and continues to play in healing and healthcare, as well as in experiences of illness, injury, and death. This event aims to enrich interdisciplinary approaches to the medical humanities, humor studies, and histories of visual culture and art.
This event will feature ten-minute short-form talks exploring vibrant intersections of humor, visual culture, and the health humanities, each followed by ample time for discussion, questions, and feedback involving all attendees. The speakers showcased are contributors to an upcoming edited volume, but the event is open to all, and we encourage people who are not contributors to join us and get involved.
We will schedule regular breaks and aim to accommodate participation across multiple time zones. You are welcome to join late or leave early. Please reach out with any access needs at cslobog1@jh.edu.
Read MoreApril 30, 2021
2:00pm – 4:00pm
VERDANT MEDICINE: Hildegard’s Resonant Apothecary
VERDANT MEDICINE: HIlDEGARD'S RESONANT APOTHECARY, a livestream concert by medieval ensemble Alkemie and a roundtable conversation on the medicinal use of plants by composer, abbess, and apothecary Hildegard of Bingen.Register by Apr. 22 to receive mailed "intersensory program cards"!
Read MoreNovember 21, 2020
All Day
Photo contest Picturing Pandemic Baltimore
NOW ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS through Nov. 21, 2020! (1) $650 grand prize, (2) $250 runners-up prizes. For details visit https://tinyurl.com/ppbalt

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October 17, 2020
6:00pm – 8:30pm
Theater of War presents Antigone in Ferguson
Antigone in Ferguson was conceived in the wake of Michael Brown Jr.’s murder in 2014, through a collaboration between Theater of War Productions and community members from Ferguson, MO. Antigone in Ferguson fuses a dramatic reading by leading actors of Sophocles’ Antigone with live choral music performed by a choir of educators, activists, police officers, youth, and concerned citizens from Ferguson and New York City. The performance is the catalyst for panel and audience-driven discussions about racialized violence, structural oppression, misogyny, gender violence, and social justice. This event will have a focus on racialized police violence and health inequity in the Baltimore area, and is open to the public.
This event is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Registration is required–please visit AIFBALTIMORE.EVENTBRITE.COM to register.

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May 24, 2020
7:00pm
Theater of War for Frontline Medical Providers
The Johns Hopkins University Program in Arts, Humanities, & Health is excited to partner with the Berman Institute of Bioethics and Theater of War Productions to present Theater of War for Frontline Medical Providers via ZOOM on Sunday, May 24th at 7pm. This innovative project links dramatic readings by acclaimed actors of scenes from ancient Greek plays in conversation with front-line nurses, doctors, medical students, first responders, and other health care providers to produce healing, constructive discussions about the unique challenges and stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Johns Hopkins’ Program in Arts, Humanities, & Health recognizes the healing and transformative power of the arts and humanistic inquiry and engages the Johns Hopkins medical campuses and surrounding communities with programming that fosters empowerment, equity, and community. This event leverages Theater of War Productions’ formidable record engaging hundreds of thousands of people around the world through meaningful performances with Johns Hopkins’ national and international leadership in responding to COVID-19. The May 24th event will also serve as a pilot for innovative and interactive programming that addresses the complex and often traumatic experience of medical providers dealing with the pandemic, in ways that can be expanded to benefit providers across the country and world in this time of crisis.
The two-hour event begins with a powerful reading of scenes from ancient Greek plays by actors Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Zombieland), Frances McDormand (Fargo, Almost Famous), Frankie Faison (The Wire, The Good Wife), and David Strathairn (The Bourne Ultimatum, Lincoln), carefully curated to address themes and issues that medical providers are facing during the pandemic. Then, four panelists–members of the JH medical community–respond to what they heard in the preceding performance that resonated with their experiences caring for patients during the pandemic. Following the community panelists’ remarks, a skilled facilitator will then prompt the audience to join the discussion with a series of questions encouraging reflection and dialogue about the complex themes raised by the plays.

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January 24, 2020
One Health Care Community One Book
A year-long celebration of reading
“Fidelity” is taken from Fidelity: Five Stories, by Wendell Berry, CA: Counterpoint, 2018. Copyright © 1992 by Wendell Berry.
“Fidelity” is used with the author’s permission.

Read MoreOne Health Care Community One Book proposes to engage members of Johns Hopkins Medicine in a year-long celebration of reading and discussing one story.
“Fidelity,” our inaugural year 2019-2020
“Fidelity,” by Wendell Berry, award-winning author of the National Humanities Medal, is a beautifully written story about the struggle of a family in a rural farming community to cope with medical care provided to a relative at the end of life.Who
Sponsored by AfterWards: An Interprofessional Program in Narrative Medicine, the Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, and the Program for the Arts, Humanities, and HealthWhy
Research shows that narrative medicine- enhances empathy and reflection
- promotes personal and professional growth
- fosters holistic care and compassion
- builds community across the health care professions
- promotes self-care
What
Throughout the year, members of the Hopkins health care community will have opportunities to engage with “Fidelity” through- keynote address
- book conversations
- book talks
- other arts presentations
Where
Practically everywhere throughout Johns Hopkins Medicine! For more information, contact onebook@jhu.edu Lauren Small lsmall2@jhmi.edu Jeremy Greene jgree115@jhmi.eduHow
· Start a conversation. You are warmly invited to read and discuss “Fidelity” with a group of your friends or colleagues anytime and anywhere you like. Download a discussion guide here or contact us to arrange for a facilitator. Contact onebook@jhu.edu for more information. Refreshments provided. · Hear a book talk. RSVP’s are requested but not required. Contact onebook@jhu.edu for more information. · Attend a cultural event. RSVP’s are requested but not required. Contact onebook@jhu.edu for more information.Get started
Download “Fidelity” by clicking on image below and begin reading now! Copies also available at the Bayview Harrison Medical Library and the Welch Medical Library.
You are invited
- to a talk by Dr. Margaret Chisolm of the Department of Psychiatry, titled “Living the good life: lessons from Wendell Berry’s Fidelity,” on January 24 at 12:15 pm, in the Eudowood Room, on the 8th floor of the Children’s Center.
- to a book talk by Dr. Brian Volck, titled “Reading Wendell Berry in Honduras: the neglected role of love in community health,” date and time TBA.
One Book News & Mentions

November 15, 2019
Conference – Trauma, Narratives, Institutions: Transdisciplinary Dialogues
Trauma, Narratives, Institutions: Transdisciplinary Dialogues
November 15-16, Baltimore
Attendance is free for everyone. To register, scroll down or click here.
For the program of the event, click here.
THIS CONFERENCE IS CO-SPONSORED BY THE CENTER FOR MEDICAL HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL MEDICINE AND THE ALEXANDER GRASS HUMANITIES INSTITUTE
Virtually all institutions are sustained through production of narratives (Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory). These narratives reflect the power relations and ideologies of institutions and reveal the politics of the larger structures that govern them. In the light of the ongoing global forced migration, socio-political negotiations of gender and trauma, and persistent urban inequalities worldwide the concept of trauma bears transdisciplinary interest and impact. Trauma’s theorizations, for example Freud’s notion of hysteria, the Great War epidemic of shell shock, the Holocaust survivor’s syndrome, Cesaire’s argumentation on postcolonial, racialized trauma, and the recent concept of “institutional betrayal” (Freyd 2008) reinforced or deconstructed institutional narratives of medical, legal, psychoanalytical, sociological, and political nature. Even though institutional presence, and the narratives it engenders, bears unambiguous influence on the traumatized individuals and collectives, this presence is insidious in its workings. If, as Michael Rothberg poignantly writes, “trauma implies some ‘other’ mode of living on,” it is worth examining the ways through which institutional practices, theories, and narratives support, enable, or challenge the “living on” of the traumatized.
By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the concept of trauma was already referred to as “debased currency” by Ruth Leys, on the basis of how often, differently, and in some cases arbitrarily the term was used. Almost twenty years later, trauma studies as a field is somewhat polarized. Cathy Caruth’s largely dominant humanities view on the difficulty to narrate trauma has been challenged by a number of critics. These critics argue that the apparent narrative fragmentation of trauma and the western-centric approach of the majority of trauma theories blur the roles of victim and perpetrator. At the same time, Bessel Van der Kolk’s recent psychiatric argument that traumatic experience leaves an imprint on the brain’s memory system that defies all potential for representation has also divided the interdisciplinary field of trauma studies. In any case, the socio-historical, anthropological, and cultural theorizations of institutional roles and narratives and the ways that they influence traumatized individuals need further exploration.
Following this line of thought and relying on the work that has been solidified by JHU affiliates and practitioners working in the Baltimore area in the past decades, the purpose of this conference is to address important questions on a global scale: How are institutions positioned to manage psychic and bodily trauma and how does trauma manifest and develop under institutional narratives of power? What are the experiences of trauma that are caused, for example, by living under racist rhetoric and structures? How is the experience of trauma changed when it is enacted by social institutions, and when it has institutional power behind it? And, importantly, what kind of a narrative is trauma itself, and how does it shape the content and methodology of different disciplines?
Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Dr Jennifer Freyd
Timetable TBA

October 31, 2018
October 2, 2018
2:00pm
125th Anniversary of the School of Medicine Events
Welch Library Building, West Reading Room

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