On March 12, 2026, you are invited to the University Club for a symposium on Teaching and Learning with Cultural Heritage: The Things of Health and Care, the second year of an annual health humanities symposium in Kingston. During this one-day event, academics, writers, healthcare professionals, students, museum workers, and more will come together for a series of lightning explorations of the intersection of health, the humanities, and things. What is a thing? This year, that is what the symposium asks as well. Must a thing be an object, or can it be a practice or a belief? And how can things be used to teach, learn, and heal?
Attendance is free, and participants are welcome to drop in and out or stay all day. Refreshments will be served.
This symposium is a collaboration between the Canadian Museum of Health Care and Queen's University, including The Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine, the Faculty of Health Sciences, the School of Nursing, the Department of Art History and Art Conservation, and the Department of History. Thank you to the Hannah Chair in Medicine, Queen’s University, for sponsoring this year’s symposium.
Please RSVP here.
Where: George Teves Room, University Club
When: March 12, 2026, 8:30 am - 5:00 pm
Closing Reception: Canadian Museum of Health Care, 5:00 - 6:30 pm
Schedule
8:30 am
Welcoming Remarks
Dr. Allison Morehead, Department of Art History and Art Conservation, Queen’s University
Rowena McGowan, Curator, Canadian Museum of Health Care
*Schedule subject to change
Each panel will be introduced with an artifact or artifacts from the Canadian Museum of Health Care
8:50 am
The Interdisciplinarity of Things
Dr. Jessica Sealey, Department of History, Queen’s University - Bodies on Display: Dissection Photography at Queen’s University
Claire Park, Graduate Student, Master of Arts in History, University of Ottawa - Spaces and Places as Objects of Care: Polio Clinics at the Victoria Public Hospital in Fredericton, New Brunswick
Dr. Allison Morehead, Department of Art History and Art Conservation, Queen’s University - Curating Interdisciplinarity: Lifeblood - Edvard Munch
Dr. Danielle Macdonald, PhD, RN, School of Nursing, Queen’s University - Bringing nursing philosophy to life through historical objects
10:10 am
The Protein Question: Science, Hype and Harm
Dr. Aditi Sen, Department of History, Queen’s University - The history of protein gap from the 1970s and how that failed in developing nations
Dr. Samantha King, School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, Queen’s University - The Thingness of Protein: Mystery and Magnetism from Molecules to Meat
Ishita Rikhi, Life Sciences, Queen’s University - Protein and eating disorders
11:20 am
Exploring Medical Artifacts
Dr. Shelley McKellar, Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine, Western University - A Tool of Healing? The 19th Century Tonsil Guillotine
Dr. Jenna Healey, Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine, Queen’s University - Compact Contraceptives: Teaching Reproductive History with the IUD
1:00 pm
Teaching Beyond the Classroom: Medical Education with Popular Culture
Dr. Dan Vena, Department of Film and Media, Queen’s University, and Andrew O’Neil, film scholar [with Rowena McGowan] - Embracing the Macabre (But Not Too Tightly): Curating a Medical Horror Film Series Between Disciplines
Dorothyanne Brown, Grumpy Cat Press - They did what? Writing about medicine’s history
Dr. Adam Blumenberg, Emergency Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center - The Time-Travelling Toxicologist
12:00 pm
Lunch
2:00 pm
Medical Heritage Institutions
Brendan Edwards and Nicole Kapphahn, Queen's University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections - Anatomy of Learning: Bringing Rare and Antiquarian Medical Texts into the Classroom
Logan Bale, Queen’s Anatomy Lab - Unique Cadaveric Specimens to Represent Organ Systems for Usage in an Anatomy Teaching Centre
Phil Loring, Curator, Teknisk Museum, Norway - Care and repair: On mending medical artifacts
Kaitlyn Carter, Department of History, Queen’s University – Sawbones and Sightseers: The History of Medicine as a Tool of Critical Historical Interpretation
3:20 pm
Witness Work
Juliane Okot Bitek, Poet, Writer, Scholar, Department of English Literature and Creative Writing, Queen’s University - Health, Care, and Witness: Excerpt from We, the Kindling — the Guinea Worm and fiction as witness work
Gabrielle Duval, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University - What We Hold Onto: Digital Things and Vaccine Hesitancy
Matt Edwards, University of Guelph, and Ben Rodgers - A Living History of Conversion Therapy in Canada
4:20 pm
Cultural and Epistemic Justice in Health
Zamrath A. Naazer, University of Toronto - The Physical Manifestations of Sufi Healing Through Time
Dr. Thomas Abrams, Department of Sociology, Queen’s University, and Dr. Carlos Novas, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University - Disability and the Politics of Daily Living
Dr. Oyedeji Ayonrinde, Providence Care; Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, Queen’s University - "Brain Fag Syndrome": decolonizing and unlearning concepts of mental fatigue
