Cait Toenjes

Tracing Cancer Through Material Culture

Independent Study Culminate

“In Tracing Cancer through Material Culture: Part One – Creation to the Middle Ages, Cait embarks on a poignant journey through time, examining how ancient civilizations understood, documented, and responded to cancer through the objects they left behind. Blending personal narrative with art historical and paleopathological analysis, this research catalog explores artefacts from Ancient Egypt to Medieval France—including papyri, temples, votive offerings, and surgical tools—to illuminate how cancer has shaped and been shaped by human experience across millennia. With a unique lens as both artist and survivor, she uncovers the enduring human impulse to record, cope with, and communicate illness through material culture.”