Call and Response: A Narrative of Reverence to Our Foremothers in Gynecology

The Resilient Sisterhood Project’s mission is to educate and empower women of African descent regarding common yet rarely discussed diseases of the reproductive system that disproportionately affect them. We approach these diseases and associated issues through a cultural and social justice lens—as we believe that poor knowledge of reproductive health is primarily related to health, racial, and socioeconomic disparities.

rsphealth.org

Artist, writer and curator, Dell Marie Hamilton serves in a variety of research, editorial and curatorial capacities at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. She has performed extensively throughout the Boston and New England area including at the MFA/Boston, the Clark Art Institute, and the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. In 2019, she was a participating artist in the Havana Biennial and is a recipient of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston’s 2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize. Her interdisciplinary practice encompasses live performance, painting, drawing, installation, video, and photography. Her work has appeared in Hyperallergic, Art in America and NKA: Contemporary Journal of African Art as well as in the anthology AntiBlackness, (Duke University Press, 2021) which investigates how the dehumanization of Black people has been foundational to the establishment of modernity. Her work also appears on the cover of Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and the Philosophy of Religion (Duke University Press, 2021). She is also a recipient of the U.S. Latinx Art Forum’s 2021 inaugural cohort of the Charla Fund, a Ford Foundation-sponsored initiative that provides grants to Latinx artists.

This fall, she will curate a group exhibition for the Fitchburg Art Museum’s inaugural Black Artist Residency program in collaboration with the artist collective “WhereAreAllTheBlackPeopleAt.” To explore her work, visit www.dellmhamilton.com or follow her on Twitter and Instagram via @dellmhamilton.

In 2019, the Resilient Sisterhood Project, (RSP), a non-profit healthcare advocacy organization that supports Black communities, took a leading role in illuminating and raising public awareness about the notorious medical experiments of Dr. James Marion Sims, and the surgeries he conducted on enslaved Black women in the mid-19^th century. Guided by the Sankofa principle of looking to the past to understand the present, RSP commissioned artist Jules Arthur to create a suite of paintings to center the identities of three of the women Sims named in his writings. They were known as Lucy, Betsey and Anarcha.

In an effort to extend the conversation, this exhibition includes Arthur’s paintings as well as the work of Vinnie Bagwell, Michelle Browder, Jeremy Daniel, Michelle Hartney, King Cobra (documented as Doreen Lynette Garner), Sara Krulwich, Anyika McMillan-Herod, Malcolm Herod, Tsedaye Makonnen, and Charly Evon Simpson. These artists have sought to reclaim the memory of these courageous women with humanity and compassion. The photographs of Howard Simmons and Spencer Platt have documented the work of steadfast organizers who lobbied and pushed the City of New York to remove Sims’s monument at the corner of Central Park and East 103^rd Street in 2018.

Whether it’s the astronomical rates of Black maternal mortality, sterilization efforts that targeted Mexican and Puerto Rican women in the 20^th century, or the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the push to block gender-affirming care for trans youth, this collaboration between RSP and the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, asks audiences to reflect on how the roots of this history and its attending racial, gender, ethnic and class biases are baked into the woeful state of contemporary healthcare practice.

Artist, writer and curator, Dell Marie Hamilton serves in a variety of research, editorial and curatorial capacities at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. She has performed extensively throughout the Boston and New England area including at the MFA/Boston, the Clark Art Institute, and the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. In 2019, she was a participating artist in the Havana Biennial and is a recipient of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston’s 2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize. Her interdisciplinary practice encompasses live performance, painting, drawing, installation, video, and photography. Her work has appeared in Hyperallergic, Art in America and NKA: Contemporary Journal of African Art as well as in the anthology AntiBlackness, (Duke University Press, 2021) which investigates how the dehumanization of Black people has been foundational to the establishment of modernity. Her work also appears on the cover of Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and the Philosophy of Religion (Duke University Press, 2021). She is also a recipient of the U.S. Latinx Art Forum’s 2021 inaugural cohort of the Charla Fund, a Ford Foundation-sponsored initiative that provides grants to Latinx artists.

This fall, she will curate a group exhibition for the Fitchburg Art Museum’s inaugural Black Artist Residency program in collaboration with the artist collective “WhereAreAllTheBlackPeopleAt.” To explore her work, visit www.dellmhamilton.com or follow her on Twitter and Instagram via @dellmhamilton.

Books

Black and Blue by John Hoberman
Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts
Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia by Todd L. Savitt
Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination by Alondra Nelson
Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Recreate Race in the Twenty First Century by Dorothy Roberts
Superior: The Return of Race and Science by Angela Saini
Is Science Racist? Debating Race by Jonathan Marks
The Troubled Dream of Genetic Medicine by Keith Wailoo and Stephen Pemberton
Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on Health in America by Linda Villarosa, 2023
Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology by Deirdre Cooper Owens, University of Georgia Press, 2018
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington, Anchor, 2008
Say Anarcha: A Young Woman, A Devious Surgeon, and the Harrowing Birth of Modern Women’s Health by J.C. Hallman, Henry Holt, 2023. Visit the illustrated online archive at

https://www.youtube.com/@AnarchaArchive.
The Pain Gap, How Sexism and Racism, in Healthcare Kill Women by Anushay Hossain, S&S/Simon Element, 2021
Henrietta Lacks, The Untold Story, by Ron Lacks, Bookbaby, 2020
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, Crown, 2011
Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy by Susan Reverby, University of North Carolina Press, 2009
Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison by Allen M. Hornblum, Routledge, 1999
Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America, Saidiya Hartman, Oxford University Press, 1997
Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, Harvard University Press, 2001
In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Christina Sharpe, Duke University Press, 2016

Documentary Films

Remembering Anarcha directed by Josh Carples, 2021 -

https://rememberinganarcha.com
Aftershock directed by Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee, 2022 -

https://www.aftershockdocumentary.com

News Articles

Why Are Women’s Health Concerns Dismissed So Often? 1A hosted by Jenn While, NPR, January 4, 2023 -

https://the1a.org/segments/why-are-womens-health-concerns-dismissed-so-often/
Cervical Cancer Kills Black Women at a Disproportionately Higher Rate Than White Women by Alana White, NPR, January 31, 2022 -

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/31/1076202786/cervical-cancer-kills-black-women-at-a-disproportionately-higher-rate-than-white
Labor Pains: The Pain That Is Unlike All Other Pain by Stephanie H. Murray, The Atlantic, August 12, 2022 -

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/08/childbirth-pain-epidural-trade-offs/671113/

Curator's Tour with Dell M. Hamilton

Curator's Tour with Dell M. Hamilton

Bay State Banner, 'Say their names: ‘Call and Response’ explores horrific history of medical testing on enslaved people'

Boston Globe, 'A Harvard exhibit honors enslaved women’s contributions to reproductive health'

Boston Art Review, 'Take the Day: Fourteen Exhibitions That Warrant Art-Filled Trips Across New England'

Boston Globe, 'Call and Response examines racism in reproductive health, history'

Harvard Crimson, 'Call and Response: A Narrative of Reverence to Our Foremothers in Gynecology'

WGBH, 'Reframing the disturbing history of gynecology through art'

Harvard Gazette, 'How Lucy, Betsey, and Anarcha became foremothers of gynecology'

Recent Exhibitions

Vote!

Reclaiming Our Hands: Reclaiming Our Art

The Extraordinary Commission: Student Activism and the Birth of Afro-American Studies at Harvard

Call and Response: A Narrative of Reverence to Our Foremothers in Gynecology

About the Curator expand_more

The Resilient Sisterhood Project expand_more

Curatorial Statement expand_more

Download the Exhibition Guide expand_more

Call to Action expand_more

Events expand_more

Curator's Tour with Dell M. Hamilton

Curator's Tour with Dell M. Hamilton

In the News expand_more

Bay State Banner, 'Say their names: ‘Call and Response’ explores horrific history of medical testing on enslaved people'

Boston Globe, 'A Harvard exhibit honors enslaved women’s contributions to reproductive health'

Boston Art Review, 'Take the Day: Fourteen Exhibitions That Warrant Art-Filled Trips Across New England'

Boston Globe, 'Call and Response examines racism in reproductive health, history'

Harvard Crimson, 'Call and Response: A Narrative of Reverence to Our Foremothers in Gynecology'

WGBH, 'Reframing the disturbing history of gynecology through art'

Harvard Gazette, 'How Lucy, Betsey, and Anarcha became foremothers of gynecology'

Further Reading expand_more

Recent Exhibitions

Vote!

Reclaiming Our Hands: Reclaiming Our Art

The Extraordinary Commission: Student Activism and the Birth of Afro-American Studies at Harvard