Conferences

September 6, 2012

Workshop

Artifacts, Aesthetics, and Authority

Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science

September 6-7, 2012.

This workshop and the accompanying planned volume will explore authority, epistemology, and aesthetics in the history of anatomy and medicine in a series of case studies centered on a wide range of visual material, and covering diverse aspects of the production and circulation of artifacts and visualizations. It draws together a number of North American and a few international scholars whose training and affiliations are not only in the history of medicine and/or science, but also in art history and museum practice. The papers presented would investigate roles of images and objects in the formation of the anatomical sciences from the eighteenth through the twentieth century in popular culture and medical pedagogy, in orthodox institutional contexts, as well as in nonacademic spaces. They look at practitioners’ own understandings of dissections; the role of specimens in anatomical knowledge production; and the use of anatomical atlases as circulating objects whose aesthetics established authority for their authors.

Organizers
Eva Åhrén, National Institute of Health
Carin Berkowitz, Chemical Heritage Foundation

All panels will take place in Franklin Hall (427 Chestnut St., Philadelphia) in the Fels Room and Presidents’ Room

Day 1:
1:30-2:30pm Introductory Remarks: Carin Berkowitz and Eva Åhrén
2:30-5:00pm Session 1:  Anatomical Specimens at Work

  • “The Work of a Good Specimen: Frederic Wood Jones’ Intellectual and Rhetorical Uses of Human Specimens”
    Lisa O’Sullivan, New York Academy of Medicine
    Commentary: Eva Ahren and Anna Maerker
  • “Making Anatomical Collections Useful, Or, Why the Knoxes Knocked Waxes (and Preparations)”
    Anna Maerker, King’s College London
    Commentary: Nico Bertoloni Meli and Erin McLeary
  • “The Pathology of War: Museum Collecting During the Great War”
    Erin McLeary, Independent Scholar
    Commentary: Shauna Devine Lisa O’Sullivan

Day 2:
9:30am-12:00pm Session 2:  Seeing, Depicting, and Knowing
  • “The Surgeon’s Seeing Hand:  Teaching Anatomy to the Senses in Britain, 1750-1830.”
    Carin Berkowitz, Chemical Heritage Foundation
    Commentary: Lisa O’Sullivan and Nico Bertoloni Meli
  • “The Rise of Pathological Iconography: Baillie, Bleuland, and Their Collections”
    Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Indiana University
    Commentary: Ellery Foutch and Eva Ahren
  • “Seeing, Knowing, Showing: Specimens and Visualizations in the Anatomical Work of Anders and Gustaf Retzius, 1830-1919,”
    Eva Åhrén, National Institutes of Health
    Commentary: Erin McLeary and Carin Berkowitz

1:30-3:00pm Session 3:  Anatomy and Health 
  • “Science, Disease and Representation: Medical Photography during the American Civil War, 1861-1865,”
    Shauna Devine, Duke University
    Commentary: Anna Maerker and Ellery Foutch
  • “Dissecting the Perfect Man: Anatomical Representations of Bodybuilder Eugen Sandow”
    Ellery Foutch, University of Wisconsin, Madison
    Commentary: Carin Berkowitz and Shauna Devine

3:30-4:30pm Commentary and concluding discussion: John Harley Warner