Call for Papers: History and Cultural Representations of Human Remains Conferences
Call for Papers: History and Cultural Representations of
Human Remains Conferences
Medical Museums and Anatomic Collections at the Natural
History Museum, Toulouse, on 4 February, 2013
Anatomic Models at the Academy of Medicine, Paris, on 4
April, 2013
Exhibiting Human Remains at the Hunterian Museum, London,
on 4 June, 2013
Although modern anatomy owes a lot to comparative
anatomy, the fairly recent separation between natural history museums and
medical museums in the mid-nineteenth century has tended to obscure this
connection. This conference intends to focus on the constitution, rise and
evolution of medical museums and the ways in which the constitution of
anatomical collections has been represented in literature and the arts. It will
look at matters ranging from the use of menageries for anatomical research to
the proximity between human and animal remains in medical museums, as well as
issues of classification and organisation. The importance of zoological
specimens in medical museums and the role played by animal remains in the
constitution of private medical collections and pathological museums will be
central to this conference, which aims to trace the impact of comparative
anatomy on human anatomy and examine the debates raised by anatomists' methods
of investigation, such as those concerning vivisection or the human and humanity,
as in the case of criminals or 'savages'. By analysing the history of this
aspect of medical museums together with its reception and popularisation, this
conference will focus on the evolution of the representation of humans and
animals as objects of medical investigation and look at literature and the arts
as significant media playing an active part in the history of medicine.
We invite 20-minute papers that engage with, but are not
limited to, the following topics:
- medical museums and/as cabinets of curiosities
- medical museums and comparative anatomy
- animals and/in medical research
- collecting, preserving, classifying human and animal
remains
- the location and architecture of medical museums
- medical museums, humans and humanity
- anatomical collections and the rise of criminal
anthropology
- anatomical collections and the rise of ethnology
- representations of mad collectors/anatomists/surgeons
Please send 300-word proposals (attached as a .doc-file;
in French or English), together with a short biographical note to Laurence
Talairach-Vielmas (talairac@univ-tlse2.fr)
& Rafael Mandressi (rafael.mandressi@damesme.cnrs.fr<mailto:rafael.mandressi@damesme.cnrs.fr>).
Please write 'EXPLORA/Medical Museums and Anatomical
Collections/Abstract'
as email object. Deadline for submissions: September 1,
2012. Contributors will be notified that their proposal has been accepted by
mid-October 2012.