Our People
Medical Humanities Executive Committee and Administrative Staff
Medical Humanities Executive Committee
Jennifer Arch
Jennifer Arch, Interim Director of the Medical Humanities
My teaching and writing at Washington University have developed from my graduate work on the prose texts of Geoffrey Chaucer. My editions of those four works were published in The Norton Chaucer (2019). Chaucer’s linking of science (A Treatise on the Astrolabe) and poetry led to my interest in the medical humanities. Three of my classes in English (L13 307 Writing and Medicine, L14 391W Literature and Medicine, L14 151 Stories of Medicine) serve as core courses in the Medical Humanities minor.
Rebecca Messbarger
Rebecca Messbarger
Professor Messbarger's major research interests center on Italian Enlightenment culture, in particular the place and purpose of women in civic, academic and social life, and the intersection of art and science in the production of anatomical wax models during the age.
Amy Eisen Cislo
Amy Eisen Cislo
Amy Eisen Cislo’s scholarship focuses on embodiment and the social history of medicine.
Cislo’s publications range from research on Early Modern Alchemy in the German-speaking world to contemporary Trans* issues in the United States. Her other research and teaching interest is in Girls Studies, with a focus on LGBTQI youth.
Kat Haklin
Kat Haklin
Kat Haklin is a scholar of nineteenth-century France working at the intersection of literature, visual studies, and the medical humanities to study representations of spatial confinement.
Sowande' Mustakeem
Sowande' Mustakeem
Sowande' Mustakeem's recent courses include "Slavery and Memory in American Popular Culture" and "Visualizing Blackness: Histories of the African Diaspora Through Film."
Patricia Olynyk
Patricia Olynyk
Patricia Olynyk is an artist, writer, and educator whose work explores science and technology-related themes and the ways in which social systems and institutional structures shape our understanding of our place in the world. She is the former director of Washington University’s Graduate School of Art and the Florence and Frank Bush Professor in Art. She holds a courtesy appointment in WashU’s School of Medicine and fellowships in the Institute for Public Health and Living Earth Collaborative, both interdisciplinary hubs that facilitate research across a wide range of fields. Prior to joining WashU in 2007, Olynyk was part of the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, where she also directed their endowed distinguished visitors program and the Roman J. Witt visiting faculty program. In 2005, she became the first non-scientist appointed to the university’s renowned Life Sciences Institute.
Christina Ramos
Christina Ramos
Christina Ramos specializes in the history of medicine, especially early modern medicine, with a geographical focus on Latin America. She is especially interested in the complex intermingling of medical, religious, and indigenous cultures; the history of colonial hospitals and the provisioning of public health; the Inquisition as an archive for medical history; and the daily experience and treatment of sickness and disease.
Luis Salas
Luis Salas
Julie Singer
Julie Singer
Professor Singer’s research focuses on medieval French and Italian literature and culture; particular interests include literature and medicine, the cultural history of science and technology, disability studies, gender studies, and theories of language, sound, and voice.
Corinna Treitel
Corinna Treitel
Medical Humanities Administrative Staff
Jen Killion
Academic & Administrative Cluster Supervisor – History and Art History & Archeology in Arts & Sciences
Hannah Ryan
Academic & Administrative Coordinator - Medical Humanities