Thomas Söderqvist Our own Adam Bencard will publicly defend his PhD-dissertation “History in the Flesh: investigating the historicized body” on Friday 15 February at 1pm.
“History in the Flesh” is a historiographical study of a number of historical, philosophical, sociological and anthropological approaches of the body over the last 30 years. Framing his thesis as a contribution to the emerging critical engagement with the so called linguistic, cultural and discursive turns in the humanities. Adam Bencard particularly criticizes the New Cultural Historians’ focus on the historicized body, that is, the idea of the body as a thoroughly cultural construct. Instead he proposes an understanding of the body based on the concept of ’presence’ (Gumbrecht, Runia).
Adam Bencard has been trained in history and philosophy at Roskilde University, and is presently research assistant at Medical Museion.
The public defence takes place in the old anatomical theatre of Medical Museion, Friday 15 February, 1-4pm.
Evaluation committee:
- Dorthe Gert Simonsen, Associate Professor, Department of History, Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen (chair)
- Roger Cooter, Professorial Fellow, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London (public opponent)
- Knut Stene-Johansen, Professor, Institute for Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, Oslo University (public opponent)
The dissertation is available from adambencard@hotmail.com.
Read a resumé of the dissertation here.
