Lisa Kerr, PhD, MFA | Visiting Artist Limited

When we connect meaningfully with other humans, we improve our health. Neurobiological research shows that connection and compassion help us regulate emotion, experience pleasure, and nurture bonds. We reduce loneliness, build community, and recognize that we share a common humanity despite our differences.

The key to compassion and connection starts with a gaze—with how we look at the world and each other. While the clinical gaze describes a distancing, objectifying way of looking at other humans and their bodies, the poetic gaze challenges us to observe with awe and curiosity the world around us, including other humans in all their complexity and contradictions. This awe, too, is associated with emotional regulation and better health.

During this residency and inspired by Reynier Llanes: Passages, writer and health humanities educator, Lisa Kerr, PhD, MFA will invite writers from MUSC and the community to pen a series of epistolary poems to human subjects in the Gibbes art collection, all of which will begin "Dear Human" and will be written on postcards that will be displayed for the community to read. 

Open Studio Hours
Monday, August 19: 11am-3pm
Tuesday, August 20: 2-4pm
Wednesday, August 21: 3-7:30pm
Friday, August 23: 2-4pm
Saturday, August 24: 11am-3pm
Sunday, August 25: 1-3pm
Wednesday, August 28: 3-7pm
Thursday, August 29: 2-4pm
Friday, August 30: 11am-3pm

About Lisa Kerr
Lisa Kerr, PhD has been a faculty member of the Center for Academic Excellence/Writing Center since 2007. She also directs the Office of Humanities, leading efforts to integrate the health humanities into the health science education of our six colleges.