Jefferson Humanities & Health

Through Friday, April 4. Helix Gallery. Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10AM-5PM.

In this solo exhibition by Dominic Quagliozzi, the artist presents recent work that is informed by his lived experience with Cystic Fibrosis and as a recipient of a double lung transplant in 2015. Since that time, he has loosely documented the changes in his body through paintings, sculptures, works on paper and video. His art also functions as talismans through which to channel change that is self-empowering, and indeed, more able to be controlled, flipping the inevitable estrangement he experienced within the medical industrial complex as a patient of a serious and life-threatening surgery. By emphasizing the human in medical humanities, Quagliozzi’s objects and their accompanying narratives contribute to this evolving critical field in ways that are playful, introspective and reflective of the fragility and vulnerability of chronic illness. For more information visit Helix Gallery.

This is an asynchronous event. Students looking for credit towards the Asano Humanities & Health Certificate can fill out an Asano Attendance Assignment for it on the Jefferson Humanities & Health Canvas.

Questions? Contact Kirsten Bowen, Humanties Program Coordinator.

Wednesday, April 2, 5-6PM, Kanbar Performance Space in the Kanbar Campus Center, 4201 Henry Ave, Philadelphia. Light refreshments served.

Friction, discomfort, competition, and conflict play a role in our lives in large and small ways. Our creativity can help us to not only manage difficult situations but find inspiration and even partnership within opposition. This year, the Creativity Core Curriculum is having multiple events around the theme of "Creativity within Conflict." We will explore meaningful and productive thinking about the value of creativity as a source of resilience in challenging times.

Speaker, Yphtach Lelkes, is co-director of the Center for Information Networks and Democracy and co-director of the Polarization Research Lab. His presentation will speak to how the tension between exploration—seeking out new ideas—and exploitation—relying on the familiar—drives decision-making across all levels of life, from primitive organisms searching for food to algorithms shaping our newsfeeds. Exploration sparks discovery and learning but can spread misinformation or overwhelm us with novelty. Exploitation, while efficient and reliable, risks creating echo chambers and deepening societal divides through hyper-personalized content. Through examples spanning nature, social systems, and AI, we'll uncover how to balance the positives and pitfalls of these dynamics to foster better decisions, healthier information habits, and fairer algorithms that can support creativity.

Questions about any of these events may be directed to Maribeth Kradel-Weitzel

This is not a Jefferson Humanities & Health event but credit is available for the Asano Humanities & Health Certificate.

Thursday, April 3, 12-1PM, JAH Atrium. Lunch provided while supplies last. Open to Jefferson students, faculty and staff, and registered attendees of the 2025 Health Humanities Consortium Conference.

Attendees of the 2025 Health Humanities Consortium Conference will be invited to participate in a hands-on artmaking workshop accompanying the solo presentation Corporis Fabrica. In this workshop guests will create drawing collages from a selection of artist materials and medical materials common to Dominic Quagliozzi’s artistic practice; graphite, colored pencils, watercolor paper, tape, Betadine (povidone iodine).

Through themes of vulnerability, personal introspection and concealment/exposure guests will be prompted to reflect on a memory where they have felt vulnerable, either physically or emotionally, and make a drawing, write a blurb or poem about that experience. After the drawing is made, instruction will lead them to conceal that personal anecdote with a dark staining ink-like Betadine antiseptic solution.

Over time the Betadine will fade and lighten to an ochre-yellow hue and reveal the memory once concealed.

Dominic Quagliozzi (artist) is a multidisciplinary artist and arts educator. His work reconciles his lived experience with chronic illness and disability to explore personal histories and the domestication of illness. He received an MFA in Studio Arts from Cal State University, Los Angeles and a BA in Sociology from Providence College. His work is in the permanent collection at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum and in the Rhizome.org digital archive. In 2018, he was on the Keynote patient panel at the Nexus Summit for Interprofessional Care and Education at the University of Minnesota. He was a recipient of the MassMOCA Assests4Artists statewide capacity grant in 2024. He is on the Arts Council for Creative Healing for Youth in Pain. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at Calgary Contemporary in Canada and Casula Powerhouse Art Centre in New South Wales, Australia. He has given workshops and lectures at the Rhode Island School of Design, Worcester Art Museum, UCLA Geffen School of Medicine, USC Keck School of Medicine, Chapman University and Cal State Long Beach.

Questions? Contact Kirsten Bowen, Humanities Program Coordinator.

Friday, April 4, 12-1PM, JAH Atrium. Lunch provided while supplies last. Open to Jefferson students, faculty and staff, and registered attendees of the 2025 Health Humanities Consortium Conference.

Michelle Browder is the artist, sculptor, and creator of The Mothers of Gynecology Monument in Montgomery, Alabama. Browder’s monument reclaims the history of the enslaved Black women – Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy – who underwent medical experimentation by physician J. Marion Sims in the late 1840s. A decade earlier, Sims received his medical degree at Jefferson Medical College. 

For nearly 35 years, artist and activist Michelle Browder has used art, history, and “real talk” conversations to mentor marginalized and disfavored students through visual arts and spoken word. She has created and branded art diversion programs used by juvenile detention centers in Atlanta, Georgia and Montgomery, Alabama. Michelle is the founder and director of the I AM MORE THAN... Youth Empowerment Initiative located in Montgomery, Alabama, and the founder of More Than Tours, a social enterprise providing transformative tours of Alabama. Michelle is dedicated to transforming narratives surrounding maternal and women’s health by leveraging art, history, and bold discussions from a woman's viewpoint. Her work has been featured in and on PBS News Hour, Washington Post, Montgomery Advertiser, Partners In Health, American Medical Association, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, ACOG Medical Journal, National Geographic, and New York Times.

Moderator: As Director and Co-Founder of Monument Lab, Paul Farber is among the nation's thought leaders on monuments, memory, and public space. Farber is author and co-editor of several publications and his forthcoming book, After Permanence: The Future of Monuments, will be published with the University of North Carolina Press. Farber’s curatorial and collaborative work includes Beyond Granite: Pulling Together with Salamishah Tillet, the first curated multi-artist public art exhibition on the National Mall in Washington D.C. (2023), and Declaration House in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park (2024) with Anna Arabindan-Kesson and Yolanda Wisher. Farber is the host and creator of The Statue, a podcast series from WHYY/NPR. Farber is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Public Art & Space at the University of Pennsylvania and holds a PhD from the University of Michigan in American Culture.

During 2024-2025, the Jefferson Humanities Forum hosts multidisciplinary scholars and thinkers to investigate the theme of Access.

Michelle Browder's visit is presented as part of the 2025 Health Humanities Consortium Conference. Learn more at Jefferson.edu/HHC2025.

Michelle Browder’s visit is supported by a 2024-2025 Pedagogy Grant from the Jefferson Center for Faculty Development and Nexus Learning. The grant, “Before Diversity, Equity and Inclusion There Must Be Empathy Dignity and Respect: Truth-Telling About the Origins of Racism in U.S. Healthcare Through Art and History,” is led by Monica Medina-McCurdy, MHS, PA-C, Assistant Professor, College of Health Professions; Amber King, PharmD, BCPS, FNAP, Associate Professor, College of Pharmacy, Co-Director, Jefferson Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education; and Megan Voeller, Director of Humanities, Sidney Kimmel Medical College. The event is co-presented with the Jefferson Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education and Bernard L. Lopez, MD, MS, CPE, FACEP, FAAEM, FCPP, Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion, Thomas Jefferson University. The event organizers would like to thank the many colleagues and students who have contributed to the support and planning of Browder's campus visit.

Questions? Contact Kirsten Bowen, Humanities Program Coordinator.

Check out this interview with Michelle Browder on the Mothers of Gynecology monument on PBS from 2023.

Monday, April 7, 12-1PM, Scott Memorial Library 200A. Lunch provided. Open to Jefferson students.

Join us for a discussion of chapters 4, 26, 27, and 28 from The Open Heart Club by Gabriel Brownstein.

Access the reading here.

Born in 1966 with a congenital heart defect known as the tetralogy of Fallot, Gabriel Brownstein entered the world just as doctors were learning to operate on conditions like his. He received a life-saving surgery at five years old, and since then has ridden wave after wave of medical innovation, a series of interventions that have kept his heart beating.

The Open Heart Club is both a memoir of a life on the edge of medicine's reach and a history of the remarkable people who have made such a life possible. It begins with the visionary anatomists of the seventeenth century, tells the stories of the doctors (all women) who invented pediatric cardiology, and includes the lives of patients and physicians struggling to understand the complexities of the human heart.

Copies of The Open Heart Club will be available for students after the discussion. 

Facilitator:

Katherine Hubbard, MA, Teaching Instructor, JeffMD Humanities Selectives, Sidney Kimmel Medical College.

Participants are expected to read, and come prepared to discuss, the text selected for each session. To access the reading, participants must visit the Health Humanities Reading Group module in the Jefferson Humanities & Health organization on Canvas. Most Asano students are already users in the Humanities & Health Canvas course. If that is not the case, participants may email Kirsten Bowen, Humanities Program Coordinator, at kirsten.bowen@jefferson.edu.

About the Health Humanities Reading Group:

The Health Humanities Reading Group gathers regularly to think critically about health as it is understood through various disciplinary perspectives, social contexts and value systems. This ongoing program is open to students, faculty and staff, and offers an informal learning environment facilitated by participants. Participants are expected to read, and come prepared to discuss, the text selected for each session.

Monday, April 7, Online via Zoom, 5-6PM. Open to Jefferson students.

Self-Care Medley [Music & Writing Edition]

In order to effectively care for others, we must first learn to care for ourselves. This virtual workshop will introduce you to a variety of music-based experiences designed to promote healthy stress management and burnout prevention. Facilitated by Peggy Tileston, MT-BC.

About the Creative Approaches to Self-Care Series

In order to care effectively for others, we must first learn to care for ourselves. This interdisciplinary series is designed to engage students in self-care practices that promote healthy stress management and burnout prevention. Workshops will address topics including how to cope with stress and anxiety, cultivate relaxation techniques, find balance and develop self-compassion.

Please note: This workshop is virtual and open to Jefferson students only; pre-registration required. A Zoom link will be provided in the Eventbrite order confirmation and the event reminder from Eventbrite, which will be emailed 48 hours before the event. If you do not receive the Zoom link, please contact Kirsten Bowen at kirsten.bowen@jefferson.edu.

Co-presented with the Student Counseling Center (SCC)

Questions? Contact Kirsten Bowen, Humanities Program Coordinator.

Friday, April 11, 8:30-10:00AM or 10:30am-12:00PM, Hamilton Second Floor. Open to Jefferson students.

This in-person experience simulates a birthing plan meeting with your patient, Melody, and her partner, who are played by simulated patients. Prior to the meeting, you will read her patient record and articles relating to racial disparities in Black maternal health. You will work in interprofesional teams of 5-6 students and brief as a team before meeting with Melody and her partner to provide your recommendations regarding the birthing plan. This takes place in-person. 

Email Jefferson Center for Interprofessional Practice & Education to reserve a spot.

This is not a Jefferson Humanities & Health event.