Works-In-Progress with Dr. Alka Patel
Department: Center for Medical Humanities
Date and Time: March 2, 2016 | 12:00 PM-1:00 PMEvent Location: University Club Library
Event Details
On Wednesday March 2 2016, in the University Club Library, Art History Professor Alka Patel presented her research on the career of Dr. Benjamin Simpson, both as an army physician and as a photographer in India in the mid- to late 19th century. Speaking to an audience of about sixty students and faculty from various schools around campus. She argued that Dr. Simpson, rather than a “great man” in the vein of colonial biographies, is representative of the “type” of army physician-photographer – akin to the “native Indian types” he popularized through his own early photographs: he and other physician-photographers were instrumental in advancing the chemical processes of early photography in the tropics, and feeding the commercial demand for a remote knowledge of India in the metropole. This lecture was a part of the Medical Humanities Initiative’s Works-in-Progress series, where faculty from around campus have the opportunity to showcase their research projects dealing with the intersection of medicine, arts, and the humanities to an interdisciplinary audience.