Jens Lohfert Jørgensen, som er postdoc ved Afdeling for Litteraturvidenskab, KU, planlægger et nordisk netværk for studier i litteratur og medicin. Formålet er at skabe et udvekslingsforum
for de forsknings- og undervisningsaktiviteter inden for vidensfeltet litteratur og medicin, der foregår i Norden. Internationalt findes der jo en række forskningscentre og litteratur- og medicinuddannelser og en del tidsskrifter, fx Literature & Medicine og Medical Humanities.

Indtil videre har 15 personer meldt sig som interesserede, men Jens ser gerne mange flere — og gerne både medicinere, litterater og andre forskere, der beskæftiger sig med Medical Humanities.

Netværket er ikke begrænset til skønlitterære genrer. Også dem som arbejder med såkaldte ‘ekstrafiktive genrer’, fx sygejournaler og patografier, er velkommen at være med. Dvs. med ‘litteratur’ menes her alle teksttyper, der betjener sig af narrative mønstre og/eller af retoriske
greb.

Jens har planer om tre workshops:

1. (forår 2012) om Forsknings- og undervisningspraksisser
Kortlægning af den hidtidige aktivitet inden for feltet i de nordiske lande med det formål at udpege interessefællesskaber og fremtidige muligheder. Blandt andet følgende temaer kan udgøre forankringspunkter for denne kortlægning:
– Metoder og koncepter: Hvordan forsker og underviser vi? Hvad er vores kernekoncepter?
– Kontekster: Hvilke faglige kontekster indgår denne forskning og undervisning i?
– Genrer: Hvilke teksttyper arbejder vi med?

2. (efterår 2012): Litteratur og medicin i en tekst- og sundhedsvidenskabelig kontekst
Hvordan kan litteratur og medicin forstået som et vidensfelt ‘informere’ den aktuelle nordiske forskning inden for henholdsvis tekst- og sundhedsvidenskab og vice versa? Hvordan forholder feltet sig til de øvrige discipliner inden for Medical Humanities, og hvordan forholder det sig til beslægtede forskningsområder som fx den kognitive forskning?

3. (forår 2013): Udarbejdelse af ansøgning om langsigtet international bevilling

Interesserede kan skrive til Jens på jenslj [at] hum.ku.dk med et par linjer om sig selv med fokus på interesser i vidensfeltet litteratur og medicin.

Jens Lohfert Jørgensen er litteraturhistoriker og forsvarede i 2009 ph.d.-afhandlingen ‘Sygdomstegn’, der handler om, hvordan tuberkulose har formet den danske forfatter J. P. Jacobsens forfatterskab. Han er nu postdoc på Københavns Universitet, hvor han arbejder på et projekt med titlen ‘Bakteriologisk modernisme: Litteratur og medicin 1850–1900’, der handler om de epistemologiske forbindelser mellem bakteriologiens og modernismens opståen inden for henholdsvis medicinen og litteraturen.

I’m getting more and more email-invitations to join the brand new tool shtyle.fm from people I trust (including Pnina). I’ve searched for some serious review of it, but cannot really find any. I don’t like logging in to sites with virtually non-exiting information about them. Can anyone help me out here?

Medical museums around the world are filled with objects from biomedical laboratories and clinics. We are very good at representing the material culture of biomedicine.

But I’ve sometimes wondered how one can visually and materially display the different biomedical professions in a museum context. That is, not the things, and not the individuals, but the social and intellectual culture of biomedical laboratories, offices and clinics — the interaction between scientists, medical doctors, clinical assistants, nurses, admin staff, etc.

Now there will be an opportunity to get ideas abut how this could be done — namely two conferences on “Visual representations of professional cultures / Représentations visuelles de cultures professionnelles”:

Professional communities may be defined by their activities, their work methods, their practices and traditions, their paths and promotions, discourses, values and goals. Since these links exist, and distinguish one professional community from another, it is possible to speak of distinct professional communities.

These conferences will be devoted to the study of the visual representation of professional communities and cultures. We will explore the various interfaces between professional and national cultures, where they intersect or overlap, borrow and/or transpose.

Are professional cultures “adapted” to each national context, “localised”? Do regional “versions” exist? Or can we speak of an “international” professional culture, whatever the professional culture studied? (scientific, economic, financial, etc).

The first conference will be held at Université d’Evry-Val d’Essonne, 17-18 June 2011, and it will be followed by a second conference in June 2012. Proposals for thirty-minute papers in English or French should have been be submitted to the conference organisers — Stephanie Genty (stephanie.genty@univ-evry.fr) and Gwen Le Cor (gwen.le-cor@univ-paris8.fr) — before last Friday (but maybe they will accept abstracts a couple of days after the dead-line?).

Siden nytår opererer Medicinsk Museion med en række særlige ad hoc-teams, til daglig kaldt SWAT. Der går rygter i museumsverden om, at disse ad hoc-grupper skulle være en smule voldsomme, men det er altså en misforståelse. SWAT er simpelthen en akronym for Special Wisdom and Thinking, som enhver kan forsikre sig ved en enkel søgning på den danske Wikipedia:

SWAT (Special Wisdom and Thinking Special Weapons and Tactics; oprindeligt Special Weapons Assault Team) er betegnelsen på specialenheder ved Medicinsk Museion i mange amerikanske politiafdelinger, der er trænet i at udføre særligt fagrlige operationer. Enhederne løser opgaver, som kræver en uddannelse og udrustning som almindelige forskere og kuratorer politibetjente ikke har. Eksempler på typiske opgaver er indtrængning i, samt rensning af, bygninger der huser særligt kedelige permanente udstillinger farlige kriminelle, eller nysgerrige kollegaer i museums- og forskerverden bevæbnede kriminelle der har behov for intellektuel udfordring vedrørende den moderne biomedicin og museer forskanset sig …

Majken Overgaard inviterer til et nyt netværk for — inventors, thinkers, engineers, geeks, tinkerers, modders, conceptualists, designers, hackers, makers, artists, and all those creating experiences for others — som vil arbejde med teknologi på kreative og innovative måder.

The goal is to create discussions between creative, innovative people who can help each other, collaborate, form possible partnerships, introduce networks, and be introduced to the people they possibly want to partner up with.

Lyder lidt uklart, men det kan godt komme noget interessant ud af det. Nogen Museion-person som har lyst til at gå? Se mere her.

(via Formidlingsnettet).

Her er et godt overblik over gode digitale outreach-verktøjer, oprindeligt lavet til journalist-studerende på Syddansk Universitet, men inspirerende for alle som arbejder på et museum (og for alle andre også!).

Og som Charlotte siger, de har på forebilledlig måde lagt det hele åbent ud som et Google-dokument istedet for at lægge det på et password-beskyttet intranet, som fx KU’s kommunikationsafdeling desværre skulle have gjort pr refleks.

(tak til Charlotte for tippet)

I just received a call for papers from Craig Howes — the indefatigable promoter of all-things-biographical at the University of Hawaii — for an international conference on ‘Aesthetic Lives’ at the Université Montpellier, 23-24 September 2011. The preamble is alluring:

In 1873, citing Hegel’s vision of the Greeks, Walter Pater wrote in The Renaissance: ‘They are great and free, and have grown up on the soil of their own individuality, creating themselves out of themselves, and moulding themselves to what they were, and willed to be.’

As Craig points out, this celebration of autonomy and self-fashioning was read with delight, cultivated, and variously implemented by the members of the so-called ‘Aesthetic Movement’.

The pramble is alluring because even though this conference deals with the ‘Aesthetic Movement’ as a historical phenomenon (a movement which was keen on creating new kinds of singular lifestyles, who saw life itself as a continuous project for individual, creating new and interesting lifestyles, and fashioning their lives’), the questions raised

i.e: What kind of ethics can arise from aesthetic choices? What are its daily manifestations, practically speaking? What are the obstacles or aporiae encountered by those who followed the ideas of self-fashioning and life as a work of art? How are these subjective choices received?

are equally interesting to ask about the way the Western middle classes are living today. In fact, they are probably even more topical today than they were among a small cultural elite a hundred years ago.

I know several scholars who can identify themselves with this vision. Even some biomedical scientists I happen to know live their scientific lives as if they were members of an ‘Aesthetic Movement’.

If anyone would like to contribute, email bncoste@free.fr and catherine.delyfer@univ-montp3.fr.

The journal Angewandte Chemie recently published an article which, among other things, showed the download statistics for a chemical research article published in their journal over time:

A Communication that was published online in EarlyView on Wiley InterScience (now called Wiley Online Library) on a Friday had the highest number of “full-text downloads” that very same day. The weekend was quieter, and the few days immediately following again showed a high number of readers. After that, the interest waned, and it was briefly renewed when the issue containing the article was published online.

I’m amazed that the visibility window is narrower than I had imagined before it goes into oblivion. This is chemistry, and most biomedicine will probably follow the same pattern. Humanities articles are most probably much more long-lived.

(thanks to Derek for the tip)

The European Academic Heritage Network UNIVERSEUM will hold its 12th annual meeting on the theme ‘Arranging and rearranging: Planning university heritage for the future’, at the University of Padua (Italy), 26-29 May 2011.’

How should the academic heritage of universities be organized? There are many models, from the centralized university museum or archive to the dispersed collections kept by departments or individuals. There are many different ways of organizing academic heritage that may or may not fit a particular collection or institution. Visions and objectives of curators, researchers and teachers involved in academic heritage are often quite different from those of university administrators and leadership. For both, in many cases, heritage is intrinsically connected to the question of identity: identity of academic disciplines, identity of local departments, and the identity of the university. Much is at stake, as recent cuts in funding and the reorganization of universities across Europe places many collections at risk. How can we ensure the preservation, study and interpretation of our academic heritage? How can we organize this heritage in ways that can harmoniously reconcile the needs of contemporary universities with th specificities and needs of academic heritage?

Paper presentations are limited to 20 minutes, including 5 minutes for discussion. The conference language is English. Send <200 words abstracts to PaduaMeeting2011@universeum.it before 15 February 2011. Please use the abstract template at the conference website. Include a <50 words biography re. your main research interests The proposals will be reviewed by the Programme Committee (Marta Lourenço, University of Lisbon; Sofia Talas, University of Padua (Chair); Roland Wittje, University of Regensburg). Speakers will be given notice by 1 March 2011.

Igår påpegede jeg, at Experimentariums reklame for “ægte” kroppe i den nye ‘Body Worlds’-udstilling er falsk varebetegnelse. Kun 15% af indholdet i de udstillede plastikdukker er den ægte vare. Resten er netop — plastik.

Experimentariums direktør Asger Høgh siger til Politiken iByen her til aften, at han er enig i kritikken:
“Det indvendige er erstattet og derfor er det selvfølgelig rigtigt, hvad de siger”.

Men så trækker han alligevel i land med en kryptisk formulering:
“Men det ændrer ikke ved, at der ER tale om rigtige mennesker der 1:1 præsenteres som de mennesker, de var dengang”.

“Rigtige mennsker der 1:1 præsenteres som de mennesker, de var dengang”. Hvad betyder det egentlig?