Art History alum Dr. Christine Slobogin to present talk “Art, Humor, and Gender in the Second World War Plastic Surgery Ward.”

About the speaker: Dr. Christine Slobogin (C‘16) is a health humanities scholar who uses art and visual culture as a way to understand ethics, emotion, medicine, and gender. She was an Art History and English double major at Georgetown, and earned an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and a Ph.D. from Birkbeck, University of London. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Medicine and the Center for Medical Humanities & Social Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

About the talk: This talk uses the cartoons, doodles, and written asides of surgical artist Diana “Dickie” Orpen (1914-2008) to unpack the significance of both visual culture and humor in the Second World War surgical ward in England. Orpen’s oeuvre provides a material justification for the study of visual culture and cartoons in histories of humor and histories of medicine. In particular, this presentation will explore Orpen’s drawings of her alter ego “Corporal Bucket,” and the capacity for cartoons and humor to queer the surgical ward. Looking at humor, and at art, can help to construct a more holistic history of surgery.

A catered reception with Dr. Slobogin in the Walsh atrium will follow the talk. Questions and requests for accommodation should be directed to art-arthistory@georgetown.edu. This event is open to members of the Georgetown community.

Sponsored by the Department of Art and Art History and the Medical Humanities Initiative at Georgetown University.