Moving Pictures

Abstract

In health humanities classrooms, visual materials such as documentary films, photographs, and even YouTube videos often serve as accessible texts for the analysis and discussion of individual experiences of illness and disability or as evocative illustrations of issues such as access to care or end of life. Such works can foster empathic responses, sharpen critical thinking, and develop communication skills in health professions students. Visual materials can also serve as openings for students to critique the culture of healthcare itself and as opportunities for them to identify disparities, confront stigma and discrimination, and envision change. Thus, the visual arts not only encourage our students to see but also reveal to them how, what, and why they see what they see—sometimes prompting their action and often provoking their transformation. This chapter describes and defines visual culture and visual activism in the context of three health and human rights movements of the twentieth century—breast cancer, AIDS, and disability rights—that have all foregrounded the critical practice and political strategy of producing visibility and deploying testimony in forms such as documentary, video, photography, and poster art. It then describes health humanities methodologies and materials in three content areas—mental illness, trauma of war, and disability—used in a variety of classroom settings to enable critical analysis and explore advocacy and intervention. For example, students consider the difference between looking and witnessing, how visual images influence attitudes toward patients and impact health policy, and the balance between inciting moral outrage from exposure to images and inducing compassion fatigue from overexposure to them.