Update: this program has been cancelled.
Join professionals in the fields of medicine and art for a virtual panel discussion on Hannah Wilke: Art for Life’s Sake. The discussion will focus on Wilke’s explorations of pleasure, illness, and death through her artistic practice. Panelists include Dr. Somalee Banerjee, Dr. Dharushana Muthulingam, and Dr. Craig Pearson. The conversation will be moderated by Yoko Kiyoi, Assistant Curator of Education at the Pulitzer.
Dr. Somalee Banerjee is an internal medicine physician, medical educator, public health researcher, and artist, based in Oakland, California. She teaches medical trainees introspection through art museum observation, and lectures about the intersection of public health and art, drawing on her work in medicine and global public health in the U.S. as well as in India. Her artistic body of work centers on allegories of the intersectionality of medicine, feminism, and craft. Dr. Banerjee received B.A. in Biology/Neuroscience, a B.F.A. in Painting, an M.D. in Internal Medicine from Washington University in St. Louis, an M.P.H. in Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley. Her published work ranges from an illustrated children’s book about self-esteem to medical research on the Ebola outbreak and opioid epidemic.
Dr. Craig Pearson is a writer and medical researcher based in St. Louis and Boston. With strong interests in medical humanities, Dr. Pearson is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University and M.D. from Washington University School of Medicine. As a Marshall Scholar and NIH Cambridge Scholar, Dr. Pearson received a Ph.D. in Clinical Neuroscience from the University of Cambridge, where he studied the molecular mechanisms of nerve regeneration in the visual system. His undergraduate training included Neuroscience, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and English at Michigan State University. He engaged in research on bone implant materials, tissue engineering, and drug delivery systems for treating a genetic blindness disorder. Dr. Pearson led neuroimaging research on the cognitive dynamics of literary reading as the Undergraduate Lab Manager for the Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab.
Dr. Dharushana Muthulingam is an infectious-disease physician, public-health researcher, medical educator, and writer in St. Louis. Her care for patients, research, and writing ask what it means to be radically care-centered at every level: interpersonal, community, society, and ecological. Dr. Muthulingam explores various topics intersecting medicine and public health including health equity and accessibility, social determinants of health, decriminalization, decolonization, and health care labor, among others. She completed a combined public health and medicine program at UC Berkeley and UCSF, internal medicine training at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Oakland, and infectious disease training at Yale. Dr. Muthulingam’s work has appeared in medical journals as well as Vogue and Ms, while her interviews have been featured in the Daily Show, The New York Times, Washington Post, Vogue, and BBC World.
