Mediated Bodies Univ Maastricht 14-16 Sept.06

Mediated Bodies

International conference
14. 15 and 16 September 2006
Faculty of Arts and Culture
Maastricht University
The Netherlands

CALL FOR PAPERS

There is no object of scientific investigation that is as difficult to
consider a 'mere' object as the human body. People do not merely 'have'
but 'are' their bodies. Accordingly, there is a strong mutual relationship
between scientific, esp. medical conceptions and practices and the
constitution and experience of the body in other cultural domains (i.e.
religion, philosophy, are, popular culture etc.) and in every day life The
visualisation of the body's interior is particularly significant as it
renders available what is both very nearby and inaccessible in daily
experience. The way the body is dealt with, cared for, used, or sensed
changes with how its interiority and boundaries are conceived of and vice
versa. Therefore, the early modern body might be very different from that
of the 21st century and the body in African medical practice might bear
little resemblance to the corporeal object of European or American
biomedicine. Bodily realities and experiences are produced as much as they
are discovered and expressed in the interplay of mediating discourses and
practice. Medical visualisation technologies are at the heart of this
interplay.

The conference centers around the question of how (medical and / or
technological) visualisations of the body interact with other discourses
and practices in the mediation of human bodies.

This question is explored in 7 successive sessions, each dealing with
specific visualisations of bodies and with particular historical or
cultural contexts. For each of these sessions there is still place for
several papers of 20 minutes. (You can find a description of the sessions
in the attachment).

If you are interested please send an abstract of your contribution to Renée
van de Vall, r.vandevall@lk.unimaas.nl, before 15 May 2006.