Visual Cultures of the Medical Modern

A two-day conference to be held at Azim Premji Bengaluru, 19th - 20th February, 2026 co-

organized by the English and Media Studies group

About the conference:

What is the Modern Screen’s engagement with health, epidemics and
illness? Historically, colonial and postcolonial institutions, private and state actors
have played a key role in shaping the modern mediascape of health narratives.
Representationally, we derive from and ascribe meaning to states of health mediated
through cinematic narrative, maps, medical images like the X-Ray or foetal
photography and data visualization that renders the unseen landscape of bodily
interiors visible. Epistemically, “viral media”, as recent scholarship has termed it, is
the indispensable infrastructure in our time that can apprehend the complex
entanglements between human societies, viruses and non-human ecologies. In such
a framework, epidemics on screen are not the representation of a biological event
but are themselves mediated phenomena.
This conference hopes to bring about a convergence between the fields of
Medical Humanities and Screen Studies, both of which have been interested in a
range of visual cultures of medicine: the visual iconography of disease in medical
textbooks, the science exhibition and portraiture alongside more contemporary
appearances in comics and graphic novels about illness and care. This growing
corpus of material has not received much critical attention in either field, especially in
the context of India. Given the many contexts in which the visual domain of medicine
is embedded, a clear methodological practice can be challenging for the researcher.
This conference thus also aims to bring together scholars in various disciplines to
forge new frameworks and critical vocabularies that can move academic discourse
on medicine’s visual cultures forward within Screen Studies and the Medical
Humanities.

Keynote Speaker

Bishnupriya Ghosh, Professor of English and Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

Call for Papers and submission guidelines:
We welcome early career researchers and senior doctoral students to
send in abstracts of not more than 400 words for paper presentations related to the
conference theme, along with a 50-word bio-note, by the 9th of November, 2025
using the following link: https://forms.gle/JhnveW31eHF8JgZS9. We especially
encourage papers focused on visual cultures of medicine in India and/or her
historically marginalized communities.
Travel and Accommodation:
Conference funds can provide limited support towards travel within India - further details
will be communicated to selected participants.
Selected participants will be provided food and accommodation at our
university campus for the conference duration.

Important Dates:
Event Dates: February 19-20 th , 2026
Abstracts Due: 16 th November, 2025 [Deadline Extended]
Communication of decision on shortlisted abstracts: 7 th December, 2025
Full papers due: January 16 th , 2026

Potential themes for papers can include but are not limited to:
● Unseen medical practices (surgical procedures, traditional practices, medical
miracles or the normalizing of deviant bodies) on the modern screen and their
role in informing a 21st century understanding of bodies and healthcare
practices
● Historical continuities or ruptures in hygiene and sanitation practices depicted
on the modern Indian screen
● History of medicine/health on screen and its impact on policy measures or
professional practice
● Digital medical practices in India (medical and health apps, their clinical and
diagnostic use and codification of bodies) and their modification or continuity
with an earlier age of the physical encounter with a medical
practitioner/institution
● Are visually arresting pathologies/deformities more likely to be routinely
documented or do visual cultures enable visibility for little-known conditions?
● Telenovelas and streaming television series about medical practice and
prevalent attitudes or cultural notions about such experiences in India
● Medical imaging technologies, modern clinical practice and the formation of
patient subjectivities
● Gender/age/caste and visual iconographies of health and disease

Kinds/forms of texts for analysis can include but are not limited to:
● Documentaries by independent/state-sponsored filmmakers
● Autopathographies or graphic stories of health, illness, caregiving, medical
practice
● Visual archives of disease and medicine
● Medical textbooks
● Comics - web, print
● Visual print culture (magazines, periodicals, advertisements)
● Celebrity visual culture (a focus on the public documentation of surgical
procedures and experiences of childbirth are of special interest)
● Portraiture and the Arts and their engagement with themes of health, illness,
disease and medical practice (folk art practices are of special interest)

● Spectacular spaces - physical or digital spaces standing in for the “freak
show”, inviting and creating specific viewing practices around bodily
appearance
● Maps or other indexical representations of disease
● Visual archives of disease “events” in India - including but not limited to
Cholera, Cancer, Tuberculosis, famine, man-made disasters like the Bhopal
Gas Tragedy
● Digital and physical exhibitions of medical practice and/or their history
Conference location:
Azim Premji University Campus, Bengaluru
Contact details:
For any other information, please write to us at :
visualmedicalcultures@gmail.com

Click on the following link to open the CFP event page:

https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/events/2026/visual-cultures-of-the-m...