The Corner Society "Case Notes: Art History's Medical Imaginaries"

Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Assistant Professor, Art and Archaeology and African American Studies, Princeton University

Case Notes: Art History’s Medical Imaginaries

How have art and medicine converged historically, and how do they do so today? This talk centers the work of Black diaspora artists, tracking art history's medical imaginaries and the stories they help us narrate about how health, wellbeing and care connect us.

Anna Arabindan-Kesson is an Associate Professor of African American and Black Diasporic art with a joint appointment in the Department of Art and Archaeology. Born in Sri Lanka, she completed undergraduate degrees in New Zealand and Australia, and worked as a Registered Nurse in the UK before completing her PhD in African American Studies and Art History at Yale University. She is the director of Art Hx, a digital humanities project and object database that addresses the intersections of art, race, and medicine in the British Empire. Her first book is available from Duke University Press, and it is titled Black Bodies, White Gold: Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World.