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Dr Hannah Halliwell

I specialise in nineteenth-century French art and visual culture. I am particularly interested in the intersections between art and medicine, visualisations of drug use and addiction, and representations of the female body and/or prostitution. I have taught on a wide range of areas relating to French and/or nineteenth-century art, including Orientalism, Impressionism and 'post'-Impressionism.

Before joining Exeter as Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture, I taught at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Birmingham. I received my AHRC-funded Art History PhD from the University of Birmingham. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

My monograph Art, Medicine, and Femininity: Visualising the Morphine Addict in Paris, 1870-1914 will be published with McGill-Queen's University Press in January 2024. The book argues that artworks played a key role in creating false narratives about who was or could become addicted to drugs, setting a precedent for the visualisation of drug addiction. In this book, and indeed in my wider research and teaching, I link the feminisation of addiction to broader anxieties in late nineteenth-century France - the defeat by Prussia in 1871, concerns about social decadence, a declining population, and a rising feminist movement. 

I have given talks about my research to various audiences around the world. For example: Association for Art History (Glasgow, Birmingham, London), Alcohol and Drugs History Society (Shanghai), UK Society for Anaesthetists, HERA-funded Intoxicating Spaces project, ECR French Nineteenth-Century Network, Southern Association for the History of Medicine and Science (Charlottesville, VA). 

I am the Assistant Reviews Editor for the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs journal (University of Chicago Press).

 

Pronouns: she/her
Office hours: Mon, 1-3pm (term 1), Queens, BG.32a
(email to book an appointment)

Research interests

I specialise in nineteenth-century French art and visual culture. I am particularly interested in the intersections between art and medicine, visualisations of drug use and addiction, and representations of the female body and/or prostitution.

I am currently researching the representations of opium dens and opium dreams in nineteenth-century French visual culture. My research looks at all kinds of art media: caricatures, oil paintings, medical illustrations, wax models, etc. I am also researching the visual and material culture of drug paraphernalia, with a focus on morphine syringes and opium pipes.

My doctoral and post-doctoral research explored representations of morphine addicts and morphine addiction in French visual culture. This research will appear in my forthcoming monograph, Art, Medicine, and Femininity with McGill-Queen's University Press. The book examines how and why artists almost always portrayed the morphine addict as female, when statistical studies at the time showed men as the majority of users.

I have also researched the medical and artistic visual culture of morphine addiction. This research was published as an article in the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs journal (Vol. 37, no. 1, Spring 2023).

I am currently writing the Historical Dictionary of Impressionism with Professor Frances Fowle. This will be published in 2025/6 with Rowman & Littlefield. 

Modules taught

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