Database

Our goal is to create a single hub of resources focusing on the intersections between cultural arts and medicine. Our interns, Maymunah Ahmed and Rubab Raza, are curating and developing this database, adding in changemakers, local ideas, podcasts, videos, and articles on this growing field. We hope this hub serves as a foundation for asking and answering questions on how to decolonize and reimagine the voices of color and their arts in medical settings. This is a constant work in progress.

If you have any ideas or recommendations, please email our curators at contact@aseemkala.org.

Culture and Religion in Medicine

Religion and Mental Health: The Case of American Muslims on JSTOR: discusses leading causes of stressors/mental health amongst American Muslims which include an identity crisis and a sense of alienation because of how Muslim Americans face challenging aspects from food to clothes and how children especially are fixed into the mainstream culture and are distanced from their culture.

Mindfulness in Salah Prayer and its Association with Mental Health on JSTOR: This article actually did a study to see how it would help Muslims. And the results were very intriguing, indicating that those who offer prayer regularly and with mindfulness have better mental health as compared with those who don’t offer it regularly and with the mind.

Religion, spirituality, health and medicine: Why should Indian physicians care? Chattopadhyay S – J Postgrad Med (jpgmonline.com)

Religion, spirituality and medicine in Australia: research and clinical practice

Religion and Disparities: Considering the Influences of Islam on the Health of American Muslims on JSTOR: This article goes into their idea of researching different ways to deal with health in our religion by still abiding by religious values.

Surgery issue: Altar and Table: A phenomenology of the surgeon-priest (nih.gov)

“It’s Medically Proven!”: Assessing the Dissemination of Religion and Health Research on JSTOR

The impact of religion and culture on diabetes care in Nigeria

It’s All Good: Magick, Mysticism & Earth Medicine – Yoruba Medicine and Ancient African Healers (google.com)

Bioethics for clinicians: 19. Hinduism and Sikhism (nih.gov): This research article focuses on how important it is for physicians to have an understanding of Hinduism and Sikhism when helping a patient who is Hindu or Sikh.

Bioethics for clinicians: 21. Islamic bioethics – PubMed (nih.gov): This article focuses on Islamic Bioethics and provides an understanding for physicians who are not familiar with Islam.

How culture connects to healing and recovery | Fayth Parks | TEDxAugusta – YouTube

Perspectives: An Open Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, 2nd Edition (americananthro.org)

(PDF) Medicine and Culture: Transcultural Needs in Modern Western Societies (researchgate.net)

Momin Saqib: How Can Diversity in Perspectives Help Develop Culturally Competent Mindsets? | TED Talk

‎Health and Culture on Apple Podcasts

Advancing our understanding of religion and spirituality in the context of behavioral medicine

Racism and Resistance in Cultural Dance and Arts

AMWA Dance Medicine Panel 2021

Decolonizing Dance Pedagogy: Application of Pedagogies of Ugandan Traditional Dances in Formal Dance Education: Journal of Dance Education: Vol 15, No 4 (tandfonline.com)

Critical Postcolonial Dance Pedagogy: The Relevance of West African Dance Education in the United States on JSTOR

Decolonizing Dance Discourses PDF

Racism and Social Space in Canadian Dance: Actants, Structures, and Dancing Differently

First Nations, Metis and Inuit Music and Dance Article

Black Dance and the Fight for Flight: Sabar and the Transformation and Cultural Significance of Dance from West Africa to Black America (1960-2010) on JSTOR

RECOGNIZING SYSTEMIC RACISM IN DANCE – Seattle Dances

Race, Bioethics, and Public Health Project | Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics

Stories of Black Womanhood Negotiated in the Dance Studio Thesis Paper

Social justice and queer activism in India – Daraja Press

Danielle Torley: I stepped out of grief — by dancing with fire | TED Talk

Melissa Walker: Art can heal PTSD’s invisible wounds | TED Talk

Laurel Braitman: The mental health benefits of storytelling for health care workers | TED Talk

‎The Mindful Muslim Podcast on Apple Podcasts: A podcast about people talking about experiences of mental health struggles as well as professionals working within the field. Also, delving into mental health, psychology, Islam and spirituality.

Racism and Medical Education: Telling the Full Story | Beyond the White Coat (simplecast.com)

Tackling ethnic health disparities: Lisa Cooper at TEDxBaltimore 2014 – YouTube

‎Indigenous Health MedTalk: Decolonising Maternal Healthcare with First Nations Midwife Angela Coe on Apple Podcasts

Muslim women’s experiences with stigma, discrimination and abuse are associated with depression in America – News | UAB

What Islam really says about women | Alaa Murabit – YouTube: This is an amazing Ted Talk done by Alaa Murabit who discusses what Islam actually says about Muslim Women

The flight that changed my life | Samah Safi Bayazid | TEDxTysons – YouTube

Does resistance through classical dance mean questioning its origins and form? In Conversation With Ranjana Dave by The Swaddle (soundcloud.com)

Classical dance in the here and now: Can it accommodate a new generation of artists trying to find their own voice?-Living News , Firstpost

Looking at mental illness through dance, Arts News & Top Stories – The Straits Times

MedEdPublish – What Dance taught a Doctor: A resident’s perspective on the role of humanities in psychiatry training

“Dance/Movement Therapy As a Tool to Address Racism and Injustice in Se” by Melody Gamba (lesley.edu)

“Because we have really unique art”: Decolonizing Research with Indigenous Youth Using the Arts | International Journal of Indigenous Health (uvic.ca)

Indigenous Healing Dances, Cultures, and Arts

Indigenous Native American Healing Traditions (nih.gov): This article focuses on the healing traditions of Native Americans. It mentions how music, dance, and community plays a huge role in the healing energy of the patient. The article also speaks about the importance of integrating indigenous medical practices into modern medicine.

Malombo Musical Art in VhaVenda Indigenous Healing Practice

From the Areíto to the Cordon: indigenous healing dances

The Wisdom of and Science behind Indigenous Cultural Practices (mdpi.com)

Shamanism, Music, and Healing in Two Contrasting South American Cultural Areas – Oxford Handbooks: This research paper focuses on the diversity of South American culture. The author shows how important shamans and musical healing practices are between two different tribes. The article also shows how spirituality and cultural arts like music plays a big role in medicine

Art and wellness: The importance of art for Aboriginal Peoples’ health and healing (nccah-ccnsa.ca)

Innovation and Healing in Contemporary Yup’ik Mask Making | Anthropologica (uvic.ca)

Culture and biomedical care in Africa: The influence of culture on biomedical care in a traditional African society, Nigeria, West Africa (researchgate.net): This article focuses on how traditional methods for treating diseases are big in Nigeria. The researchers bring to light how important it is for health-care systems to understand the socio-cultural construct of the places they are in and integrating that into medicine

Vimbuza or Mashawe: Mystic Therapy: This journal focuses on the Malawi dance healers who cure an illness Malawians call mashawe. To cure it, they do a traditional dance called Vimbuza. The article gives a nice background on the dance and how it is used as traditional medicine.

“Our libraries are dying”: Biopiracy and the social value of traditional medicinal knowledge in Ecuadorian Amazonia

Project MUSE – Dancing the Divine Female: Diasporic Women’s Encounters with the Hindu Goddess through Indian Classical Dance (jhu.edu)

Description: Bodied, Embodied, and Reflective Selves (ixtheo.de)

Indigenous Knowledge to Close Gaps in Indigenous Health | Marcia Anderson-DeCoteau | TEDxUManitoba – YouTube

Connecting Modern Medicine to Traditional Healing: Dr. Cheo Torres at TEDxABQ – YouTube

Perspectives of Indian Traditional and Allopathic Professionals on Religion/Spirituality and its Role in Medicine: Basis for Developing an Integrative Medicine Program

Clinical Interventions with Cultural Arts

Gale OneFile: Health and Medicine – Document – Capoeira as a clinical intervention: addressing adolescent aggression with Brazilian martial arts

Asian Dance/Movement Therapy Educators’ Experiences of Teaching Dance/Movement Therapy in East Asia after Training in the US | Semantic Scholar

Why Stanford’s medical students dance, draw, write, play music and make films | Stanford Medicine

Creation as participation/participation as creation: Cultural production, participatory politics, and the intersecting lines of identification and activism

Therapeutic Potential of a Drum and Dance Ceremony Based on the African Ngoma Tradition (nih.gov)

Visualização de Breaking Canons: Intersectional Feminism and Anti-Racism in the Work of Black Women Artists (revistavista.pt)

Capoeira as a Clinical Intervention: Addressing Adolescent
Aggression With Brazilian Martial Arts

A systematic review of active group-based dance, singing, music therapy and theatrical interventions for quality of life, functional communication, speech, motor function and cognitive status in people with Parkinson’s disease | BMC Neurology | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)

Human responses to nature- and culture-based non-clinical interventions: a systematised review – AJ Fairbrass, H Chatterjee, KE Jones, D Osborn, 2020 (sagepub.com)

In Turkey, Sufi music is used to decrease patient stress | The World from PRX (pri.org)

‎‎Social Medicine On Air: 18 | Dance, Healing, Justice | Shilpa Darivemula on Apple Podcasts

More than Just an Arts Festival: Communities, Resistance, and the Story of Desh
Pardesh

Training the clinical eye and mind: using the arts to develop medical students’ observational and pattern recognition skills – PubMed (nih.gov): This study shows, when the arts, like dance and art, were used together with clinical medicine studies, the medical students had a much wider approach when understanding and connecting with patients.

Changes in cognitive function after a 12-week exercise intervention in adults with Down syndrome – PubMed (nih.gov): This study examines how the brain changes with someone who underwent dance training. The results of this study show how dance-training is a great therapy for patients with certain brain diseases. The study brings a greater understanding of the brain and dance therapy.

Developing a Culturally Competent Faith-Based Framework to Promote Breast Cancer Screening Among Afghan Immigrant Women on JSTOR

Addressing OB/GYN Care Access for Refugee Women Using Traditional Dance Exchanges | Medical Humanities (bmj.com)

Rehumanizing Clinical Language Through Classical Indian Dance | Journal of Ethics | American Medical Association (ama-assn.org)

A Reflection on the Intersection of Dance and Surgery | Shilpa Darivemula and Roshni Prakash — Intima (theintima.org)

Kali Narrative: Creativity in Crisis | Shilpa Darivemula and Tanvi Gandhi — Intima (theintima.org)

Mobilizing Musical Performance and Expressive Culture in the Ebola 2014 Epidemic: Introduction on JSTOR

Addressing Intimate Partner Violence: The Need for Culturally Competent Solutions » in-House, the online peer-reviewed publication for residents & fellows (in-housestaff.org)

The U.S. Has A History Of Linking Disease With Race And Ethnicity : Short Wave : NPR

Dancing doctors: exploring the potential of cultural dance education to improve cultural competency and clinical communication

Arts in Medicine Literature Review (giarts.org)

How Are the Arts and Humanities Used in Medical Education? Results of a Scoping Review: Academic Medicine (lww.com)

The-efficacy-of-creative-arts-therapies-to-enhance-emotional-expression-spirituality-and-psychological-well-being-of-newly-diagnosed-Stage-I-and-Stage-II-breast-cancer-patients.pdf (smartmove.co.in)

“Shall I Compare Thee to a Dose of Donepezil?”: Cultural Arts Interventions in Dementia Care Research | The Gerontologist | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

What works for wellbeing? A systematic review of wellbeing outcomes for music and singing in adults (sagepub.com)

Organizations to Know

Making Moves Universal: dynamic movement-based transformational program designed to help people move into a state of being that enhances healing and sustains vitality

Freedom Community Clinic: Community-centered healing for the body, mind, and soul. Integrating ancestral, Indigenous, and holistic healing with the strengths of Western medicine

Humans of Medicine — The Human Side (of Medicine) (thehumansideofmedicine.com)

Institute for Healing & Justice in Medicine (instituteforhealingandjustice.org): Guided by the values of healing, community, and justice, the Institute for Healing and Justice in Medicine is an interdisciplinary hub – a community, a research epicenter, and a dialogue space.

The Healthcare Gambit (@thehealthcaregambit) • Instagram photos and videos: A podcast for women in healthcare by women in healthcare

White Snake Project: An activist opera company founded and led by an immigrant woman of color. We integrate social activism with original opera and are redefining how opera is made by investing in new technology and involving young people from our community

Dance, Theater, and Medicine – American Medical Women’s Association (amwa-doc.org)

The Swaddle: The latest discussions and questions on health and culture in India, with a great podcast with Ranjana Dave- In Conversation With Ranjana Dave by The Swaddle (soundcloud.com)

Pad.ma: Online dance archive of classical Indian dance exponents, rare gems of dance archived here

ABOUT US | DANCE DIALOGUES: Dance Dialogues is an initiative that works with dance makers and dance lovers, helping them connect with provocative and diverse ideas, individuals and institutions, towards informing their practice in multi-disciplinary ways.