Health Humanities Lab
The HRC Health Humanities Lab fosters interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research collaborations that center on better understanding and critiquing the systematic and structural inequities that produce health and healthcare disparities, and on imagining and enacting alternatives. The goal of the Health Humanities Lab is to bring together fresh perspectives from the humanities, arts, and social sciences, as well as from the Richmond community and beyond, to advance individual and communal well being.
All students, faculty, staff, and community members are welcome to join. If you are interested in joining the HHL, please contact Chris Cynn.
Thank you to the Office of Health Initiatives, the Honors College, the East Marshall Street Well Project, and the School of the Arts for their support and collaboration with the HRC Health Humanities Lab.
Meet the Team
Chris Cynn, Ph.D.
Lab Director
Co-director, East Marshall Street Well Oral History and Memorialization Project
Chris Cynn is the founder and director of the Health Humanities Lab in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Humanities Research Center and the co-director of the lab's East Marshall Street Oral History and Memorialization Project. She is also an associate professor in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, affiliated with the departments of African American Studies and English. She is the author of Prevention: Gender, Sexuality, HIV, and the Media in Côte d'Ivoire and has also co-edited a collection of essays on literary and visual representations of HIV/AIDS.
Michael Dickinson, Ph.D.
Co-director, East Marshall Street Well Oral History and Memorialization Project
Dr. Michael Lawrence Dickinson is an associate professor of African American history at Virginia Commonwealth University. He was a 2019-2020 Barra Sabbatical Fellow at University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies. His research interests include enslaved black life, comparative slavery, Black Atlantic studies, and urban history. Dr. Dickinson’s book Almost Dead: Slavery and Social Rebirth in the Black Urban Atlantic was recently published by the University of Georgia Press as part of its Race and the Atlantic World Series.
Current Projects
Upcoming Meetings
All upcoming meetings will take place over Zoom. Please reach out to Christine Cynn (cjcynn@vcu.edu) for the invite link. All are welcome.
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Friday, Mar. 7th | 12:00-1:00PM
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Friday, Apr. 4th | 12:00-1:00PM
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Friday, May 2nd | 12:00-1:00PM
News
National Endowment for the Humanities awards two grants to VCU projects
One will establish a health humanities minor, while the other supports a professor’s book project on visual images of African Americans in leisure contexts from slavery through the Jim Crow era.
VCU students, faculty document oral history of the East Marshall Street Well Project
The Health Humanities Lab, a research lab at VCU’s Humanities Research Center, is conducting the project in collaboration with the Family Representative Council.
‘Racism is destructive to Black bodies’: Lecturer discusses medical inequality
Dr. Anna LaQuawn Hinton presented “Breathing Life into Black Wombs: Ableism, Misogynoir, and the Reproductive Injustice within the Medical Industrial Complex,” a lecture discussing racism and medical inequality, on Feb. 8 at the VCU Humanities Research Center. Photo by Rani Sisavath.
Upcoming Events
No upcoming events at this time.
Past Events
Health Humanities Events, 2024-25
2024 History and Health Symposium
October 2, 2024
The 2024 History and Health Annual Symposium explored the history of reproductive healthcare and policies, the social determinants of health driving the current Black maternal health crisis, and strategies to ameliorate the health and healthcare disparities. The keynote presentation was given by Monica McLemore, PhD, MPH, RN, Professor, Department of Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing and Director of the Manning Price Spratlen Center for Anti-Racism and Equity, University of Washington.
Black History Found and Forged: Chronicling the East Marshall Street Well Project
February 1, 2025
The HRC Health Humanities Lab, the Office of Health Initiatives, and The East Marshall Street Well Project organized this event to reflect upon important local Black history in the making.
Health Humanities Speaker Series, 2023-24
AI and Health Humanities: A Critical Nexus for Race, Data, and Clinical Algorithms [video]
The speaker for this event was Kirsten Ostherr, PhD MPH, Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English and Director of the Medical Humanities program at Rice University.
The Borders of AIDS and the Uses of Disease [video]
The speaker for this event was Karma Chávez, Ph.D., Bobby and Sherri Patton Professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies and Department Chair at UT Austin.
Medicine, Literature and a Desire Called Utopia [video]
The speaker for this virtual event was Rishi Goyal, MD PhD, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Columbia University Medical Center (in Medical Humanities and Ethics and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society) and Director of Medical Humanities at Columbia University.
Breathing Life into Black Wombs: Ableism, Misogynoir, and the Reproductive Injustice within the Medical Industrial Complex [video]
The speaker for this virtual event was Anna LaQuawn Hinton, PhD, Assistant Professor of Disability Studies and Black Literature & Culture in the English Department at the University of North Texas.
Claiming Space in the “Birthplace of America:” Latin American Immigrants and Struggles for Belonging in Williamsburg, Virginia [video]
The speaker for this virtual event was Jennifer Bickham Mendez, PhD, Professor and Chair of Sociology at William & Mary.
Other Events
History and Health Symposium 2024: New Perspectives on Health Equity through the Humanities
"New Perspectives on Health Equity through the Humanities" is a one-day symposium that explored the history of medicine and connections to current health inequities and disparities across a variety of health professions disciplines. The keynote lecture was given by Jason Glenn, PhD, Associate Professor of History and Philosophy of Medicine, University of Kansas.
Living Legacies: “Have You Seen the Nurse?": A Conversation with St. Philip School of Nursing Alumnae [video]
This event took place on February 22, 2024. Tori Tucker, RN, PhD, VCU Health System; HRC Residential Fellow 2023-24, spoke with St. Philip School of Nursing Alumnae Mary Gilbert Holmes, RN and Burlette Cooke Trent, RN on legacies of segregation in nursing and Black girlhood. Co-sponsored by the Office of Health Equity, Humanities Research Center, HRC Health Humanities Lab, VCU Health, School of Medicine, and the School of Nursing.
Living Legacies: Navigating Medicine with Dr. Philip E.B. Byrd Jr.
This event took place on February 27, 2024. The speaker was Philip E.B. Byrd Jr., MD, School of Medicine Alumnus 1969, in conversation with Sarah Martey, M1 & Student National Medical Association (SNMA) Social Chair. Co-sponsored by the Office of Health Equity, Humanities Research Center, HRC Health Humanities Lab, VCU Health, School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, and the Student National Medical Association (SNMA).
The Afterlives of Medical Exploitation: The East Marshall Street Well Project Symposium
On April 27, 2024, the Health Humanities Lab at the HRC hosted a mini-symposium on the work of the East Marshall Street Well Project, underscoring its critical importance not only for VCU as it grapples with its own history of medical racism but also for other institutions nationally as they contend with their own similar histories. This event was co-sponsored by the Humanities Research Center, Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, and Department of History, with additional funding from a VIP grant from the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation.
Skepticism Around Clinical Trials [video]
The Office of Health Equity and Humanities Research Center Health Humanities Lab hosted a panel on skepticism around clinical trials. The panelists for this event included Leslie Randall, MD, Director of Gynecologic Oncology at the Massey Cancer Center, and Sharon Rivera-Sanchez, Founder and Chief Executive Director of Trials of Color.
Mental Health Disparities in Marginalized Groups [video]
The Office of Health Equity and Humanities Research Center Health Humanities Lab hosted a panel discussing the clinical, political, historical and media contexts related to mental health and mental healthcare disparities. The panelists for this event included Jihad Aziz, Ph.D., University Counseling Services; McKenzie Green, Ph.D., School of Social Work; Rashelle Hayes, Ph.D., VCU Psychiatry; Oswaldo Moreno, Ph.D., VCU Psychology, and Brooke Taylor, GSWS.