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Monthly Archives

September 2005

Konference: "Museum Narratives and Representations" (October 2006)

By Biomedicine in museums

Here is the announcement for International Society for Intellectual History’s conference “Museum Narratives and Representations”, to be held 6-8 October, 2006 at the School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Museum Narratives and Representations
The aim of this international conference is to explore the institution of the museum, as well as the concept of the museum in space and time, as:

• a key intellectual device of the Enlightenment,
• a powerful political tool of the modern nation state,
• a rapidly growing industry today
• a complex analytical field.

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Reaching out with medical and healthcare collections

By Biomedicine in museums

Seminar: Access and audiences: Reaching out with medical and healthcare collections
Tuesday 18 October April 2005, 4.30 – 6.30 pm
Thackray Museum, Leeds http://www.thackraymuseum.org
Speakers: Rachel Bairsto, British Dental Association; Dawn Kemp, Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh; Fiona Elliott, Thackray Museum. Commentator: Emm Barnes, University of Manchester, Centre for HSTM
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Symposium: "The patient"

By Biomedicine in museums

The patient is a central category of recent (bio)medicine — this symposium focuses on the fragile patient, the patient as an object of biomedical science and industrialized care:

The Patient: A Symposium, Bucknell University, October 18 & 19, 2006

Precariously situated between home and hospital, work and bed, life and death, the patient occupies a liminal, unstable position. Charged to identify with her state as with the moral virtue from which she receives her name, the patient also lives in the fear of our indifference and impatience. Although attended by doctors, nurses, family and friends, her condition – particularly if it is chronic – ever threatens to sever her connections with the world and to exile her into that fundamental solitude owned by the sick and suffering.

Immersed within a society and medical system that seeks optimum outcomes linked to zero errors, the patient receives care delivered with industrial efficiency. Advances in diagnostic and therapeutic modalities provide both cure and control of chronic illness not imagined a decade ago. Poised to benefit on multiple fronts, she should be increasingly satisfied with the medical encounter; and yet, many patients feel alienated or even violated by the efficiency of the medical system. What defines a quality medical encounter from her perspective? What do medical practitioners – nurses, physicians, social workers – value in their relationship with the patient? How is this relationship preserved and nurtured? What are the opportunities or perils in the physician-patient relationship? Read More

Presence: A viable alternative to representation?

By Biomedicine in museums

Things are happening in the field of historiography that may have interesting consequences for the way we conceptualise the “representation” of recent biomedicine in a museum context, e.g., this conference:

Presence: A viable alternative to representation?
An international conference at Groningen University, The Netherlands Center for Metahistory Groningen (CMG), December 1 & 2, 2005

For more than thirty years now, thinking about the way we, humans, account for our past, has stood under the aegis of representationalism. In its first two decades, representationalism, inaugurated by Hayden White’s Metahistory of 1973, has been remarkably successful in questioning the realist assumptions in historiography. By now, however, it has lost much of its vigour and productivity, especially when faced with some of the more significant phenomena of the last decades’ dealings with the past (memory, lieux de mémoire, remembrance, trauma).

There are signs, however, that a new paradigm is emerging. We have boldly given a name to this emerging paradigm, we call it ‘presence’. Read More

1st annual symposium of the DK-UK Postgraduate Forum on Bio-studies

By Biomedicine in museums

Invitation and call for 1st annual symposium of the DK-UK Postgraduate Forum on Bio-studies: Current issues in bio-studies and society, 17th-18th November 2005, London School of Economics and Political Sciences, UK

This event will be the first meeting of the newly founded DK-UK Postgraduate Forum on Bio-studies. In both the United Kingdom and in Denmark, interest in the social, legal and ethical implications of developments in the biosciences has never been greater, as reflected in initiatives such as BioCampus at University of Copenhagen, BIOS at LSE, “Danish Biomedicine 1955-2005” at Medical Museion, the ESRC Genomics Network and many others.

The aim of this symposium is to focus on current issues in bio-studies in a cross cultural context in order to generate research initiatives and networking between the participants. The main themes to be explored will be Read More

Suggestions for guest speakers, spring 2006

By Biomedicine in museums

At the meeting, Friday 2 September, I mentioned in passing that we need suggestions for guest speakers at internal and external seminars, minisymposia, conferences etc. Invitations for events in the autumn of 2006 and in 2007 can wait until later, but to find interesting people for the spring of 2006, we need to take action sooner than later. Money is so far not a seriously limiting factor. Please list your suggestions here (continue to write in this area) or in the comment area below — when we have listed some 15-20 names I will send the accumulated tentative priority list around