This cross-school, interdisciplinary symposium explores cultural representations of illness, treatment, and care in an era shaped by global mobility and data-centered operations. Bringing together artists, scholars, researchers, and scientists, the event considers how cultural narratives, medical archives, and scientific objectivity shape collective understandings of health, well-being, and disease.

The symposium features keynote speaker Dr. Priscilla Wald (Duke University), and is organized around two interconnected themes. The first, “Disease, Migration, and Metaphor” examines how illness has shaped narratives of movement, borders, and belonging across historical and contemporary contexts. It also considers how outbreak narratives influence understandings of contagion, ecosystem health, and the social responses that shape their representation. The second theme, “The Unstable Archive” examines the coded body and the changing use and interpretation of archives over time. Panelists will explore how information and visualization systems, data, modeling, and computational logics structure our understanding of complex health phenomena, and how these systems render phenomena visible, measurable, and actionable within research, governance, and public health infrastructures.

Together, the symposium asks how cultural representations of risk and uncertainty both shape, and are shaped by, public health emergencies and policy interventions. By placing cultural, artistic, and data-driven approaches into conversation, the event highlights the importance of communication, interpretation, and trust in effective public health action.

The symposium will culminate with a screening of Mariam Ghani’s feature-length documentary, DIS-EASE, which examines how our conception of disease influences our behavior during pandemics and other outbreaks. Drawing from the “weird, wild archives of medical imaging, public health messaging, and pop-culture outbreak narratives,” DIS-EASE explores how ideas move between science, science fiction, and political ideology over the past century. The event will also feature Jesse Colin Jackson’s Marching Cubes, a high-resolution installation of 3D blocks based on algorithmic language systems and medical scans. During the symposium, the artist will invite audience members to collaborate on a new construction that effectively performs computational processes while exploring how information technologies shape the building blocks of contemporary culture.

Sponsors for this symposium include: Medical Humanities, School of Arts & Sciences, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Department of History, CRE2, Center for the Humanities, Center for the History of Medicine at the Bernard Becker Medical Library.

Schedule:

11:00 – 12:30PM            Keynote Speaker: Priscilla Wald (Duke) w/Q&A

12:30 – 1:00PM             Break/ Introduction to Marching Cubes by Jesse Colin Jackson

1:00 – 2:30PM                      Panel #1: Disease, Migration, Metaphor w/Q&A - Mariam Ghani, Anne Schult (History, WashU), Dalen Wakely-Smith (History, WashU), Mitra Naseh (Brown School, WashU), moderated by Rebecca Messbarger (Italian, WashU)

2:45 – 4:15PM                  Panel #2: The Unstable Archive w/Q&A - Jesse Colin Jackson, Ulug Kuzuoglu (History, WashU), Kelli Sharpe (Director of Medical Humanities, UC-Irvine), Kat Hatklin (French, WashU), Corinna Treitel (History, WashU), moderated by Patricia Olynyk (Sam Fox, WashU)

4:30 – 5:00PM                                  Wine Reception

5:15 – 5:30PM                                   Mariam Ghani: Short introduction to DIS-EASE (in Busch 100)

5:30 – 7:30PM                             DIS-EASE film screening w/Q&A

Cover Image: Marching Cubes is a 3D-printed assembly system by the Canadian Artist Jesse Jackson, image courtesy of Creative Applications.