Call for Papers: Technique, Technology and Therapy in the Medicine of Mind and Brain, 1850-2011
Call for Papers: Technique, Technology and Therapy in the Medicine of Mind
and Brain, 1850-2011
We invite abstract submissions for an interdisciplinary workshop, which
will be held at Clarkson University on May 4th and 5th, 2012.
Handling the brain; examining the body; preparing capillary tubes;
dissecting a rat hippocampus; sectioning and staining tissue samples;
stereoscopy; freezing microtomes; electroencephalography; cinematography;
psychometric tests; fMRI; psychoactive drugs - these are but a few
examples of techniques, technologies and therapies that have had enormous
import in the medicine of the mind and brain. While receiving increasing
attention over the past several decades, the clinical specialties that
deal with the brain and the mind - psychiatry, psychology, neurology,
neurosurgery - have mostly been discussed in isolation of one another. We
therefore propose a workshop that brings together scholars who are
interested in these medical specialties to address the complicated
relationship between medical practice and the techniques, technologies,
and therapies that inform it.
From talk therapy to stem cell therapy, from X-rays to fMRIs, from
subtemporal decompression to deep-brain stimulation, over the past century
and a half different kinds of techniques and technologies have shaped
clinical practice and medical epistemology, while at the same time staging
an intervention in the doctor-patient relationship and buttressing the
cultural authority of the medical specialties of the mind and brain. Such
techniques, technologies, and therapies open puzzling historical,
sociological, and anthropological questions: What is the relationship
between technique, technology and therapy? How have each separately
constructed the medicine of the mind and brain? In what ways have they
informed scientific knowledge and clinical practice? How are they
circulated, exchanged, moved, and commodified? Is there an easy
translation among them; are there evident disruptions and slippages
between them?
By inviting scholars to discuss case studies that address specific
techniques and technologies, we seek to train an analytic spotlight on
therapy and to shed light on the ways in which therapy played a similar or
different role in the history of each of the specialties that focused on
mind and brain medicine.
We invite papers that explore these questions empirically or theoretically
from any disciplinary perspective.
Located in Potsdam, NY, Clarkson University is a small engineering
university just north of the Adirondack Mountains. Potsdam can be easily
reached by car from Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal or by first flying to
Ottawa, Montreal, Albany, or Syracuse and then renting a car and driving
from those locations.
Please send a 300-word abstract by March 16th, 2012 to Stephen Casper and
Delia Gavrus (StephenTCasper@gmail.com<mailto:StephenTCasper@gmail.com>)
Stephen T Casper (Humanities & Social Sciences, Clarkson University)
Delia Gavrus (Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University)
http://www.dictionaryofneurology.com/2012/03/call-for-papers-technique-technology.html
and Brain, 1850-2011
We invite abstract submissions for an interdisciplinary workshop, which
will be held at Clarkson University on May 4th and 5th, 2012.
Handling the brain; examining the body; preparing capillary tubes;
dissecting a rat hippocampus; sectioning and staining tissue samples;
stereoscopy; freezing microtomes; electroencephalography; cinematography;
psychometric tests; fMRI; psychoactive drugs - these are but a few
examples of techniques, technologies and therapies that have had enormous
import in the medicine of the mind and brain. While receiving increasing
attention over the past several decades, the clinical specialties that
deal with the brain and the mind - psychiatry, psychology, neurology,
neurosurgery - have mostly been discussed in isolation of one another. We
therefore propose a workshop that brings together scholars who are
interested in these medical specialties to address the complicated
relationship between medical practice and the techniques, technologies,
and therapies that inform it.
From talk therapy to stem cell therapy, from X-rays to fMRIs, from
subtemporal decompression to deep-brain stimulation, over the past century
and a half different kinds of techniques and technologies have shaped
clinical practice and medical epistemology, while at the same time staging
an intervention in the doctor-patient relationship and buttressing the
cultural authority of the medical specialties of the mind and brain. Such
techniques, technologies, and therapies open puzzling historical,
sociological, and anthropological questions: What is the relationship
between technique, technology and therapy? How have each separately
constructed the medicine of the mind and brain? In what ways have they
informed scientific knowledge and clinical practice? How are they
circulated, exchanged, moved, and commodified? Is there an easy
translation among them; are there evident disruptions and slippages
between them?
By inviting scholars to discuss case studies that address specific
techniques and technologies, we seek to train an analytic spotlight on
therapy and to shed light on the ways in which therapy played a similar or
different role in the history of each of the specialties that focused on
mind and brain medicine.
We invite papers that explore these questions empirically or theoretically
from any disciplinary perspective.
Located in Potsdam, NY, Clarkson University is a small engineering
university just north of the Adirondack Mountains. Potsdam can be easily
reached by car from Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal or by first flying to
Ottawa, Montreal, Albany, or Syracuse and then renting a car and driving
from those locations.
Please send a 300-word abstract by March 16th, 2012 to Stephen Casper and
Delia Gavrus (StephenTCasper@gmail.com<mailto:StephenTCasper@gmail.com>)
Stephen T Casper (Humanities & Social Sciences, Clarkson University)
Delia Gavrus (Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University)
http://www.dictionaryofneurology.com/2012/03/call-for-papers-technique-technology.html