Through 2018, Mariam Ghani, an artist, writer, and filmmaker, was the Wellcome artist-in-residence at the Graduate Center, CUNY and the New York Public Library. While in residence at the Graduate Center, she and a multi-disciplinary team of graduate student assistants (Harry Blain, Juliana Broad, Eileen Clancy, Jacob Clary, Josh LaMore, Christian Lewis, and Dilara O’Neil) conceptualized researched and produced a film, entitled Dis-Ease, about illness, metaphors, contagion, isolation, and the consequences of a century-plus of waging “war on disease” using archival materials from the collections of the New York Public Library, New York Academy of Medicine, and Wellcome Collection, London. Part of Ghani’s film is included in the exhibition Germ City: Microbes and the Metropolis, which opened in September 2018 at the Museum of the City of New York (ends April 28, 2019).

The Graduate Center will host a screening of the full version of Dis-Ease, followed by a panel discussion with Mariam Ghani and her team of graduate research assistants. This event is free and open to the public, but RSVP is required; click here to RSVP.

Co-sponsored by Wellcome, as part of Contagious Cities; the New York Public Library, and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY