Health Humanities Consortium Conference 2025

Schedule Overview

The HHC 2025 conference will begin with a plenary session and opening reception on the evening of Wednesday, April 2. Presentations will be grouped into 75-minute concurrent sessions on Wednesday afternoon, all day Thursday and Friday, and Saturday morning. The conference will conclude by 2 p.m. on Saturday. All times below are approximate and subject to change. 

Wednesday, April 2 

12 p.m. - Registration opens 

2-3:15 p.m. - Concurrent presentations 

3:30-4:45 p.m. - Concurrent presentations 

5:30-7:30 - Opening lecture and reception at The Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians 

Thursday, April 3 

8:30-9:45 a.m. - Concurrent presentations 

10:15-11:30 a.m. - Concurrent presentations 

11:30-1 p.m. - Workshop with artist Dominic Quagliozzi; HHC mentoring luncheon

1-2:15 p.m. - Concurrent presentations 

2:45-4 p.m. - Concurrent presentations 

4:30-5:45 p.m. - Concurrent presentations 

6-7:30 p.m. - Reception at the Museum of the American Revolution 

Friday, April 4 

8:30-9:45 a.m. - Concurrent presentations 

10:15-11:30 a.m. - Concurrent presentations 

11:30-1 p.m. - Lunch and plenary presentation TBA

1:15-2:30 p.m. - Concurrent presentations 

3-4:15 p.m. - Concurrent presentations 

4:30-5:45 p.m. - Concurrent presentations 

Saturday, April 5 

8:30-9:45 a.m. - Concurrent presentations 

10:15-11:30 a.m. - Concurrent presentations 

11:30-1 p.m. - Lunch 

2 p.m. - Optional excursions to Philadelphia cultural organizations

Conference Format

All concurrent presentation sessions will have a hybrid format (in-person and livestreamed via Zoom) by default. If you are a confirmed, you may present either in-person or via Zoom; if you are registered to attend the conference as an audience member/participant, you may do so via Zoom and/or in-person. Stay tuned for details regarding the accessibility via Zoom of plenary sessions.  

Accessibility. The conference organizers will create and encourage accessibility in all of the conference spaces and modalities. For more information, contact [email protected].

Lecture and Reception at the Mütter Museum

Wednesday, April 2, 6-8 p.m.

Join us for our opening event at the Mütter Museum with historian Samuel J. Redman, who is best known for his work on the history of museums, especially the history of anthropology and archaeology. Redman will address how human remains became highly sought-after artifacts for both scientific research and public display, as well as the ongoing and changing nature of museums. which he explores in his books Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (Harvard University Press) and The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience (NYU Press 2022).

Betadine Drawing Workshop with Dominic Quagliozzi

Thursday, April 3, 12-1 p.m.

In this hands-on artmaking workshop accompanying artist Dominic Quagliozzi’s solo presentation, Corporis Fabrica, currently running in Helix Gallery, guests will create drawing collages from a selection of artist materials and medical materials common to 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.

Reception at the Museum of the American Revolution

Thursday, April 3, 6-7:30 p.m.

Join us for a social gathering at a Philadelphia treasure, the Museum of the American Revolution in Old City!

Michelle Browder: Mothers of Gynecology

Friday, April 4, 12-1 p.m.

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. She is the artist, sculptor, and creator of The Mothers of Gynecology Monument, in Montgomery, Alabama. 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.

Current HHC Members

In-person Registration 
Individual - $275 
Contingent faculty, independent scholar or registrants with self-identified financial need - $150
Student/trainee - $75

Virtual-only Registration 
Individual - $125 
Contingent faculty, independent scholar or registrants with self-identified financial need - $75
Student/trainee - $50

Non-HHC Members 

In-person Registration 
Individual - $325 
Contingent faculty, independent scholar or registrants with self-identified financial need - $200
Student/trainee - $125

Virtual-only Registration 
Individual - $175
Contingent faculty, independent scholar or registrants with self-identified financial need - $125
Student/trainee - $100

Local (Philadelphia area) resident-day pass

Individual - $25

Our Call for Proposals for the 2025 HHC Conference is now closed. We look forward to welcoming you to Philadelphia in April! 

The Health Humanities Consortium invites proposals for its annual conference on the theme of Healing Institutions.

Our theme highlights the complex and often ambivalent role of institutions—from hospitals and universities to established organizations, customs, laws, practices and people—in health and healthcare. Inviting consideration of institutions as agents of care, the theme also acknowledges their role in exclusion, extraction and injustice. How do institutions function as mediators of health and healing? When institutions have enabled harm, what forms of redress can be brought to bear? How can we reimagine and actualize the institutional change needed to face urgent challenges to health across individual, collective and planetary scales?   

Since the 1960s, the prevailing biomedical definition of health—an understanding of wellness and illness framed in terms of physical disease and its presence or absence—has been called into question. Broader definitions acknowledge the entanglements of body, psyche and society, emphasizing social, structural and cultural drivers of health including marginalization. Current understandings of health consider how social forces materialize in physical and physiological forms across objects, technology, institutions and embodiment. With the conference theme as a springboard and provocation, we invite presentations that explore and rethink issues such as:  

• Key institutions of health and healthcare, from hospitals, insurers and universities to established organizations, customs, laws, practices and people.
• Rhetorics and practices of institutional repair and redress, particularly regarding histories of legally- and socially-sanctioned medical discrimination. 
• Boundaries and borders that mediate institutions, communities and the body.
• Community responses and resistance to institutional power.
• Underrepresented patient, caregiver, worker and learner/trainee voices in health and healthcare.
• Self-institutionalizing projects such as alternative schools and clinics.
• Curricular innovations and reform in health professions education. 
• The Philadelphia community’s historic roots in medicine and the arts and present-day efforts to achieve health equity.

Panels, papers and creative presentations that engage the conference theme are encouraged, but proposals which contribute to the broader project of the health humanities are equally welcome.