Imagining Illness: Public Health and Visual Culture
David Serlin
Abstract
From seventeenth-century broadsides about the handling of dead bodies, printed during London’s plague years, to YouTube videos about preventing the transmission of STDs, public health advocacy and education has always had a powerful visual component. This book explores the diverse visual culture of public health, broadly defined, from the nineteenth century to the present. Chapters in this volume examine historical and contemporary visual practices—Chinese health fairs, documentary films produced by the World Health Organization, illness maps, fashions for nurses, and live surgery on the Inter ... More
From seventeenth-century broadsides about the handling of dead bodies, printed during London’s plague years, to YouTube videos about preventing the transmission of STDs, public health advocacy and education has always had a powerful visual component. This book explores the diverse visual culture of public health, broadly defined, from the nineteenth century to the present. Chapters in this volume examine historical and contemporary visual practices—Chinese health fairs, documentary films produced by the World Health Organization, illness maps, fashions for nurses, and live surgery on the Internet—in order to delve into the political and epidemiological contexts underlying their creation and dissemination.
Keywords:
dead bodies,
plague,
YouTube,
STDs,
public health,
visual culture,
health fairs,
documentary films,
World Health Organization,
Internet
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780816648221 |
| Published to Minnesota Scholarship Online: August 2015 |
DOI:10.5749/minnesota/9780816648221.001.0001 |
