Biomedicine on Display

Preliminary announcement:
The Faculty of Health Sciences and the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Copenhagen are planning a joint half-day symposium on “Evolutionary Medicine”, Friday 15 December, 2006. Keynote speakers include professor Randolph Nesse (Univ of Michigan) and professor Stephen Stearns (Yale Univ). Their talks will be followed by a panel discussion with a number of scientists and scholars interested in evolutionary aspects of medicine.
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There are still a few vacant seats around the table at the Copenhagen station of the Max Planck Research Network’s European Wandering Seminar, “History of Scientific Objects”, 8 - 12 May. Remaining seats will be distributed according the first-come-first-seated principle. PhD students will have priority. Participation fee is 300 DKK per day (including coffee and lunches). Inquiries to Thomas Söderqvist, Medical Museion, ths@mm.ku.dk, not later than Friday 5 May at noon.
Program (can also be read on Hugin & Munin) and background literature:
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Findes der nogle gode argumenter for at oprette danske (eller svenske, eller norske, eller monegaskiske) medicinske, teknologiske og naturvidenskabelige kanoner? Jeg tvivler på det. For det første har hverken medicin, teknologi eller naturvidenskab noget særligt nationalt præg. Og for det andet er kanonbegrebet med til at fordreje forståelsen af, hvordan medicin, teknologi og naturvidenskab udvikles historisk.
Læs resten af argumentet i tidskriftet BioZoom, nr 1/2006. Hele artiklen findes her.
Læs de øvriga fem artikler på temaet “Naturvidenskabelig kanon” i BioZoom her.

Hi Susanne — this is an awesome one:

(from Metasystems)
I’ve been browsing around for a while. These are cool images, yes. But do they involve “imaging”?
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Apropos our own small but rich exhibition about sex and society: a museum of abortion and contraception (Museum für Verhütung und Schwangerschaftsabbruch) is opening in Vienna, Austria in May. Read more about it on this website in German, or on Jim Edmonson’s website. A test version of their website can be found here.

If you want to keep an eye on what goes on in history of (recent) biomedicine in Germany — and in German history of science, technology and medicine generally — the on-line directory of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Geschichte der Medizin, Naturwissenschaften und Technik is the place to look, see http://www.dggmnt.de/umfrage/index.html.
(thanks to Sybilla Nikolow)

One of my friends asked if the blog is dead because of zero activity between 5 and 17 April. No, it’s not dead, it’s just been hibernating. Danish Academia usually closes down completey for about 10 days in the Easter holidays, and so did our research group. But we’ll be back! Next Wednesday we are having our first annual meeting with the Novo Nordisk Foundation steering committee to justify another year of funding. I’m sure we will convince them: we’ve had a good and productive year of research work, internal seminars, public meetings — and blogging activities.

… talking about biological citizenship etc - this has just arrived in my mailbox:

Call for papers:
Embodiment and the State
Middelfart, Denmark, October 27-28, 2006

Keynote speakers:
Margaret Lock, McGill University - Allan Young, McGill University - Nikolas Rose, London School of Economics - Berardino Palumbo, University of Messina - Sarah Nettleton, University of York - András Zempleni, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique*

Introduction and aims of the conference:
Studies on embodiment processes have gained importance in contemporary anthropology, philosophy, psychology and sociology, stimulating renewals in theoretical as well as methodological perspectives: power is no more considered an abstract and external force, but is observed in its micro-physical fragmentation and influence on the body. Continue Reading »

Speaking about possible social, cultural and political contexts of recent biomedicine and biotech — Slavoj Zizek has again provided some analytical ammunition!
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Here’s the manuscript to my talk at Residència d’Investigadors in Barcelona Thursday 30 March. It’s a modified version of an article that’s being published in a special issue about university museums in Opuscula Musealia later this year. There are no notes in this blog version. If you prefer a Catalan version (!), you can get it in a hard copy printed translation; write to ths@mm.ku.dk
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Jeg besøgte det medicinhistoriske museum i Barcelona i onsdags. Det er et fondsejet museum der er tilknyttet det kirurgiske selskab, et hyggeligt lille sted, der har til huse i en flot 1800-talsvilla …

… på en sidegade i Eixemple-kvarteret. Huset er skønt, med mange smukke indretningsdetaljer … Continue Reading »