Art and the Critical Medical Humanities
(Hardback)
Publishing Details
Art and the Critical Medical Humanities
By (Author) Fiona Johnstone
Edited by Allison Morehead
Edited by Imogen Wiltshire
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic
11th December 2025
United Kingdom
Classifications
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Human figures depicted in art
Health, illness and addiction: social aspects
Physical Properties
Hardback
288
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
Description
This agenda-setting edited volume makes a forceful case for the contribution that art its practices and its histories can make to debates and developments in critical medical humanities today.
Whilst medical humanities previously emphasised an instrumental attitude towards art and art-making, recent work has opened up a dynamic space in which art can critically and imaginatively operate. With urgent attention paid to constructions of race, gender, class, sexuality and disability, the artists, art historians, and scholars in related fields represented within this volume address new and pressing questions about structures and experiences of health, medical knowledge, care, therapy, and clinical research and education.
With more than 40 contributors from a range of countries including the UK, Canada, the United States, Australia, Norway, Spain, and Germany, this landmark and multi-format collection addresses artworks from the sixteenth century to the present day, serving as a key reference point for researchers, practitioners, and educators working in medical humanities and art-aligned fields alike.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Wellcome Trust.
Reviews
An agenda-setting collection, committed to social justice and formal innovation in research, Art and the Critical Medical Humanities brings together a stimulating range of perspectives and approaches to the study of art practices and health. Anyone with an interest in art, humanities and health will surely find much of value here. -- Dieter Declercq, Lecturer in Medical Humanities, University of Glasgow , UK
Author Bio
Fiona Johnstone is Assistant Professor in the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University, UK.
Allison Morehead is Professor of Art History and in the Graduate Program in Cultural Studies at Queens University, Canada.
Imogen Wiltshire is Senior Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture at the University of Lincoln, UK.
