This summer term, stemming out of a close cooperation between University of Vienna and FOTO ARSENAL WIEN, this lecture series equips MA students with a theoretically grounded, media-literate understanding of how medicine operates as a cultural system of images, spaces, and narratives – and how these shape lived realities in powerful, often invisible ways.

Medicine has never been a purely scientific enterprise. It is deeply embedded in cultural imaginaries, visual regimes, and aesthetic practices: from anatomical atlases, hospital architecture, and early medical photography to contemporary imaging technologies, and artistic engagements with illness and care. This lecture series asks how visual culture does not merely represent medicine, but actively produces medical knowledge, norms of the body, and ideas of health, normality, risk, and deviance.

When?   Wednesdays, 18:30-20:00 pm
Where?   University of Vienna / Foto Arsenal Wien / Online

Organisers: Monika Pietrzak-Franger (University of Vienna) and Felix Hoffmann (Foto Arsenal Wien)

Speakers: Daniela Hahn (Atelierhaus Wien), Monika Perenyei (ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest), Fiona Johnstone (Durham University), Bernd Stiegler (University of Konstanz), Katrin Luchsinger (ZHdK, Zurich), Monika Ankele (Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin), Nina Ansperger (Museum Gugging), Christian Berst (art brut, Paris), Sophie Thun (University of Applied Arts, Vienna), Nora Heidorn (University of Vienna), Maria Morata Marco (University of Vienna), Felix Hoffmann and Monika Pietrzak-Franger.

The programme of the lecture series can be found here.

The lecture series is a regular course for MA students (Popular and Media Cultures / Cultural Studies): course description