Thomas Söderqvist Readers of this blog may remember that the 2010 biannual European medical museum conference was organised here at Medical Museion. The next biannual meeting, in 2012, will be hosted by our German sister museum, the Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité, 13-15 September.
The theme for the Berlin meeting is ‘Hidden Stories: What do medical objects tell and how can we make them speak?’ (the call for papers was posted here a couple of months ago). Here’s the preliminary program with sessions and speakers:
Session 1: Intro, getting things going
– Robert Jütte (Stuttgart): Exhibiting intentions: Some reflections on the visual display of a culturally purposeful object
– Thomas Söderqvist (Copenhagen): Is the ‘things talk’ metaphor really useful? Or does it conceal a deeper understanding of our material interaction with things?
Session 2: Object biographies (I)
– Sophie Seemann (Berlin): A friend’s skull – gazing in a patient’s room in 1757
– Christa Habrich (Ingolstadt): A mystery of a platinum-made cystoscope
– Lisa Mouwitz (Gothenburg): Looking through the nail
– Jim Edmonson (Cleveland): The art of extrapolation: following the trail from patent number to a revolution in surgical instrument design and manifacture
Session 3: Object biographies (II) – Waxes
– Marion Maria Ruisinger (Ingolstadt): Christus anatomicus
– Sara Doll (Heidelberg): Models of human embryogenesis. The search for the meaning of wax reconstructions
– Michael Geiges (Zürich): Wax moulage Nr. 189. From teaching aid to the patients‘ story by an unusual research document
Session 4: Teaching
– Shelley McKellar (London, Ontario): Challenging students with toothkeys and carificators: Experiences with object-based teaching in history
– Alfons Zarzoso (Barcelona): Teaching medical history through the material culture of medicine
– Stefan Schulz (Bochum) and Karin Bastian (Leipzig): Object-based, research-oriented teaching in seminars and exhibition Projects
Session 5: Research
– Thomas Schnalke (Berlin): Divas on the catwalk. Some thoughts on research with objects in medical history
– Claire Jones (Worcester): Identifying medical portraiture: The case of Andrew Know Blackall
– Julia Bellmann and Heiner Fangerau (Ulm): Evolution of therapeutic technology: Industrial archives and collections as sources for historians of medicine
– Benoit Majerus (Luxemburg): The Material culture of asylums,
– Nurin Veis (Melbourne): Stories from asylums: Discovering the hidden worlds of the psychiatric services collection
Session 6: Presenting
– Hsiang Ching Chuang (Eindhoven): Contextualizing museum experiences through metaphors
– Mieneke te Hennepe (Leiden): Scary things: Horrifying objects between disgust and desire
– Bart Grob (Leiden): Medicine at the movies
– Tim Huisman (Leiden): Anatomical illustration and beyond: Looking at Bidloo and De Lairesse’s Anatomia humani corporis
There is quite restricted seat capacity in the central conference venue in the ‘Hörsaalruine’ so the organisers strongly recommend that you register here as soon as possible (after 16 April and before 31 May). The registration is only valid when the organisers have received the conference fees.
Hoping to see you all in Berlin in mid-September! As the main organiser, Berliner museum director Thomas Schnalke, puts it:
We are looking forward to meeting with you in Berlin to share thoughts on ideas and issues that sometimes drive us crazy with frustration and delight: medical objects, collections and the stories behind them.
