One Health + Humanities Days
What do the arts and humanities have to do with health?
One Health + Humanities Days was a three-day series of events on October 25-27, 2023, showcasing the critical role that arts and humanities play in understanding and exploring sustainability and global wellbeing, including human, animal, plant, and environmental health.
One Health + Humanities Days was a partnership between the Denbo Center and the UT One Health Initiative.
Program of Events:
Wednesday, October 25
1–3 PM
Mortality as an Object of Team Research: a SPARKS Event
SPARKS: The Scholars Collective on Mortality, a pilot program of the UT Humanities Center, will offer a series of lightning talks in which scholars from a wide range of fields discuss how their research interests converge around life’s impermanence. Disciplines ranging from nursing to history to anthropology to English will be represented and all questions, both scientific and philosophical, are welcome. An open discussion with all session attendees will follow.
PI: Monica Black, Professor of History
Location: Frieson Black Cultural Center, Auditorium, Room 102/103
Who can attend?: While open to everyone, this event is most likely of interest to research faculty
3:30–5:00 PM
Pulitzer Prize Finalist David Haskell Lecture + Book Signing:
“Sounds Wild + Broken: Learning From the Beginnings of Sound”
Sonic communication was a late-comer to the evolution of life on Earth. But once “song” got started, the links that it forged became powerful generative forces. Today, the diverse sounds around us – from chirping crickets, to birdsong, to the human music in our earbuds – reveal many layers of evolutionary and cultural creativity. In this lecture, Haskell will discuss how attention to the sonic richness of the world can guide exploration, ethics, and action.
David Haskell is a writer and a biologist. His latest book, Sounds Wild and Broken, was finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and “Editors’ Choice” at The New York Times Book Review. His previous books, The Forest Unseen and The Songs of Trees, are acclaimed for their integration of science, poetry, and attention to the living world. Their honors include the National Academies’ Best Book Award, John Burroughs Medal, Pulitzer Prize finalist rankings, the Iris Book Award, the Reed Environmental Writing Award, and the National Outdoor Book Award. Haskell received his BA at The University of Oxford and PhD at Cornell University. He is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN, a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and a Guggenheim Fellow. Find him at dghaskell.com
PI: Amy Elias, UT Humanities Center Director, Chancellor’s Professor
Location: Hodges Library, Lindsay Young Auditorium (rm. 101) or via livestream (register for the Zoom link here).
Who can attend?: Open to students, faculty, and the public
7:30–9:00 PM
300 Years of Surgery: Marin Marais + a Musical Perspective on the Medical Humanities
In the early 1700s, French Composer Marin Marais had surgery to remove a urinary bladder calculus, a kidney stone that had descended into his bladder. Terrifyingly, he appears to have been awake during the entire procedure and composed a piece of music, Le Tableau de l’Opération de la Taille (1725), that depicts his horrifying observations during the surgical process, with his stress and mental health during the procedure prominently depicted in the music. Musical depictions of the human experience are common. Musical depictions of the human medical experience are less common. A collaboration between the UT College of Music, UT Psychological Clinic, and UT Medical Center, this concert and discussion combines a musical performance with descriptions of the surgical process, use of anesthesia, stress and mental health preceding and during a surgical procedure, and ways that these processes are depicted in the music itself.
PI: Nathan Fleshner, Assistant Professor and Coordinator, Music Theory and Composition, UT School of Music
Location: Haslam Music Center, Powell Hall or via livestream
Who can attend?: Open to students, faculty, and the public
Thursday, October 26
noon–1 PM
Equine Health + Medicine: Historical + Literary Perspective
Building on the OneHealth initiative idea that “humans, animals, plants, and the environment are inextricably linked, with the health of one affecting the health of all,” this presentation focuses on the history of veterinary medicine and equine health. Equine health affected all aspects of nineteenth-century society and culture in ways that are important to remember today. Nineteenth-century equine epidemics devastated economies around the globe, reminding us that horses were the primary energy source until the advent of the automobile in the twentieth century. I will draw on literary representations of farriers and vets and then focus on the practice of equine “tail docking” from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Tail docking was controversial in Britain and the US even as it was widely practiced. It raises larger questions about medical complicity in cruelty, animal rights legislation and national identity (since the practice was much more limited in Europe).
PI: Nancy Henry, Nancy Moore Goslee Professor of English
Location: College of Veterinary Medicine, Tickle Seminar Room B224 (UT Ag Campus) or via livestream (register for the Zoom link here) through the One Health Seminar Series
Who can attend?: Open to students, faculty, and the public
5:30–7:30 PM
Black Maternal Health Community Think-Tank
This panel discussion will bring together local community leaders to share and discuss innovative ideas for addressing Black maternal health disparities in Knox County, Tennessee. This project is hosted by Knox Birth Equity Alliance (KBEA)—a local group founded in 2021 that seeks to inform the public about challenges to Black maternal and infant health and support initiatives that rectify existing disparities. KBEA members include medical professionals (OB/GYNs and nurse midwives), public health workers housed at Knox County Health Department, doulas, and UTK faculty. The panel will begin with a “state of address” about Black maternal health in Knox County and then panelists will share potential fundable ideas that are already in motion or will be pursued in the future to help birthing Black mothers and infants. In the past, KBEA has hosted and sponsored events such as implicit bias training for OB/GYN staff at UT Medical Center and, most notably, KBEA spearheaded Knoxville’s first formal celebration of Black Maternal Health Week in 2022.
Panelists:
- Adrien Jones, Public Health Educator at Knox County Health Department
- Chelsea Gouty, Public Health Educator at Knox County Health Department
- Ty Roberts, Executive Director of Gennisi Charitable Birth Services
- Porsche Williams, Founder of Knoxville Black Doula Collective and Owner of Soul Sisters Wellness & Beauty
- Brittany Rosette-Jones, MPH, Minority Health Outreach Specialist
- Maeturah Harmon, DO, FACOOG, OB/GYN with Covenant Health
- Jodie Simms-MacLeod, CNM, NP-C, FACNM, Midwifery Director with UT Medical Center
- Danielle Procope Bell, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at UT Knoxville
Frieson Black Cultural Center Auditorium
PI: Danielle Procope-Bell, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
Location: Frieson Black Cultural Center, Auditorium, Rooms 102/103/104
Who can attend?: Open to students, faculty, and the public
6:00–9:00 PM
Climate Change, Language Change: Creating a Vocabulary of Healing through Theatre Games
By invitation only.
In this interactive workshop, twenty-five participants, including five UT academics and twenty other participants, will be led in an exploration of their unnamed emotions about climate change.
The Unravelling Group, a theatre-game group that explores the emotions of climate change, will lead the workshop through a series of games that attempt to map these emotions. Ethan Graham Roeder of First Take Co. will facilitate game-based activities that map emotions onto new words and sounds. Throughout the evening, University of Tennessee scholars will reflect on the group’s insights from their various fields of expertise.
By focusing on the unspeakable—the hermeneutical inadequacy of our language around climate change and its attendant emotions—this workshop is an interdisciplinary and embodied approach to climate anxiety. The event uses art and playfulness to better understand our mental health during the climate catastrophes that are unravelling around us.
PI: Georgi Gardiner, Associate Professor, Philosophy
Who can attend?: By invitation only
7:30-9:00 PM
Eric Avery, MD
“Art as (my) Medicine”
Dr. Eric Avery has been internationally recognized over the past four decades for his work combining medicine and art. He received his MD from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, Texas, as well as psychiatry training from the New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City. Avery’s prints and works on paper explore issues such as social responses to diseases (specifically HIV and Emerging Infectious Diseases), death, and sexual health. As part of one of his exhibitions, Avery set up an HIV clinic at the Fogg Museum of Art at Harvard University. His work has been shown internationally, and is in the collections of the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the ARTS Medica Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA), and the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at Yale University (New Haven, CT), among many others. His website is: https://www.ericaveryartist.com/
During the week of the One Health Symposium, Dr. Avery will collaborate with faculty and graduate students in the UT School of Art’s Printmaking Program in the creation of a limited-edition print combining linocut and lithography. One of the prints from the project will become part of the collection of the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture.
Art and Architecture Building, McCarty Auditorium, room 109
PI: Beauvais Lyons, Professor of Art and Divisional Dean of the Arts and Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences
Location: Art and Architecture Building, McCarty Auditorium, room 109
Who can attend?: Open to students, faculty, and the public
Friday, October 27
noon–1 PM
“Public Health in Nazi Ghettos”
Online lecture by Helene Sinnreich, Chair, UT Department of Religious Studies
This talk explores the survival in Nazi ghettos through public health interventions. Food supply, public baths, delousing measures, quarantines and other measures were utilized by Jews during the Holocaust to protect public health in the crowded conditions of Nazi ghettos. Dr. Sinnreich will discuss her research as well as some of the ways she incorporates undergraduate research assistants in this work.
PI: Helene Sinnreich, Professor and Department Head, Department of Religious Studies and Director of The Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Judaic Studies
Location: Virtual talk (register for the Zoom link here)
Who can attend?: Open to students, faculty, and the public
2:00-3:30 PM
Centering the Marginalized: Mitigating mental health issues while enhancing retention initiatives at PWIs
Join the Sense of Belonging (SOB) team for a roundtable discussion on ways to mitigate mental health issues often faced by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) graduate students at predominately white institutions. They will discuss how they used the tenets of Black Feminist Thought (BFT) to search for (and learn from) BIPOC graduate experiences in hopes of enhancing the campus climate for a Carnegie Research 1 Classification Doctoral University.
The SOB team will share their experiences of using the Healing Ethno and Racial Trauma (HEART) model—which promotes community healing through Heart2Heart micro-interventions (Chavez-Dueñas et al., 2019). Each micro-intervention they engage with connects to one of the tenets of BFT, allowing them to better understand how cultural spaces can help enhance the sense of belonging of BIPOC graduate students.
The SOB team will offer administrators insight into how to engage with BFT through various Heart2Heart interventions they’ve employed (e.g., brunch workshops, writing retreats, restorative circles, etc.) They will explore questions for and from administrators most related to the needs of BIPOC graduate students. Their goal is to offer insight into how administrators can actively enhance their students’ mental/social, academic, emotional, and culture-affirming support while also helping them feel safe in their learning spaces and deserving of the academic opportunities presented to them at UTK.
PI: Jamal-Jared Alexander, Assistant Professor of English
Location: Student Union Building, room 262A
Who can attend?: Open to students, faculty, and the public
5:30–7:00 PM
Embodied Cinema: Affect, Dance, and Speculative Wellness
UT Cinema Studies faculty invite you to a sensorial and intellectual feast of creative and critical research questions about feminist film and viewing practices and artistic works that center embodiments, bodies that move, and bodies that seek joy and/or struggle to find joy.
Emily Bivens, Maria Stehle, Brittany Murray, Elaine McMillion Sheldon, Eleni Palis, and Heather Coker Hawkins will share how creative movement and dance, movement on screen, and sound recordings can foster awareness of the challenges of sustaining life on a wounded planet.
PIs: Heather Coker-Hawkins, Assistant Professor, School of Art; Brittany Murray, Assistant Professor of French, Department of World Languages & Cultures
Location: McClung Museum of Natural History & Culture
Who can attend?: Open to students, faculty, and the public
Ongoing
October 25-27
Environmental Change and the Decline of an Ancient City: The Case of Lixus, Northern Morocco
Interactive Exhibit in Hodges Library
How and why do cities disappear? Are changes in local environmental factors more of a cause or are changes in the political and economic relationships that sustain local society more responsible? Archaeology is uniquely disposed to address these questions when it comes to long-term changes in past human settlement. The city of Lixus in northern Morocco, regarded as the earliest city in northwestern Africa, provides a case study for examining the interplay of environmental and social factors that lead to the decline and disappearance of a city. Lixus was a thriving port city during the first millennium BCE and early first millennium CE, but appears to become abandoned in the centuries after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west during the early 5th century CE. Human Behavioral Ecology (HBE) comprises a set of approaches to analyze the process of human settlement in a landscape, but is here used to assess the factors that lead to a city’s abandonment. Adjusting the parameters in the model presented here will indicate the degree to which environmental or social factors are responsible for Lixus’ decline.
PI: Stephen Collins-Elliott, Associate Professor, Department of Classics
Location: A virtual interactive exhibit in Hodges Library, second-floor lobby, near the Circulation Desk
Who can attend?: Open to students, faculty, and the public
October 15, 2023-Jan 30, 2024
Exhibition: Prints and Books by Eric Avery, M.D.
Selected prints and books by medical doctor and visual artist Eric Avery MD explore issues such as social responses to diseases (specifically HIV and Emerging Infectious Diseases), death, and sexual health. As part of one of his exhibitions, Avery set up an HIV clinic at the Fogg Museum of Art at Harvard University. His work has been shown internationally, and is in the collections of the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the ARTS Medica Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, PA), and the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at Yale University (New Haven, CT), among many others. His website is: https://www.ericaveryartist.com/
PI: Beauvais Lyons, Professor of Art and Divisional Dean of the Arts and Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences
Location: UT Printmaking Showcase Gallery. The Printmaking Showcase Gallery is located in the UTK Art and Architecture Building, in the second-floor hallway outside of the Printmaking Lab (Room 241).
Who can attend?: Open to students, faculty, and the public
UT Faculty! Are you interested in incorporating the One Health + Humanities theme into your courses? Check out our “One Health and Humanities Days Module” in Canvas!
“The humanities are the main course of life, the essential core of meaning in the world, where our values and our best selves are defined.”
—Amy J. Elias, UT Humanities Center Director
UT ranks tenth in the country among all universities, public and private, in the number of NEH fellowships received between 2004 and 2022.
Graduate students chosen to spend a year in the UTHC working on their dissertations graduate, on average, 1.5 years sooner, publish their first book sooner, and receive better job offers than other students in the humanities.
Faculty who spend a year at the University of Tennessee win NEH and other awards and publish award-winning books and research projects more quickly.