The 'meaning' and 'doing' of bodies and gender in medicine and healthcare

Call for Papers for a thematic track at the EASST Conference 2010:

The 'meaning' and 'doing' of bodies and gender in medicine and healthcare
Trent, Italy, 2-4 September 2010 (deadline: 15 March 2010)

The conference track will follow the development of thinking of and
talking about bodies doing things and creating meaning, through
individual and historical lifecycles experienced in broad medical
contexts. Thus, "bodily beings" are differently constituted in medical
schools, hospitals and surgeries, research labs and everyday living
environments, viewed through and connected to mechanical and electronic
appliances, inscribed with biomedical discourses and socio-culturally
based roles, such as gender, sex, race, impairment.

The human body can be viewed simultaneously as a substrate for
healthcare concerns and as an entity that acts and is enacted in the
varied practices of medical research and clinical care. In their
cultural variety, they are representing a "bodily-being-in-the-world"
(Haraway) as well as a "body multiple" (Mol): Human embodiment in
medicine is staged against a variety of backdrops, involving different
patients and families, doctors and carers, material and virtual macro-
and micro-anatomies in research and teaching, all playing different
interacting roles on the set. Medical education, itself a construct of
complex socio-cultural expectations of "good practice", is but one
factor that shapes specific anticipations of "normal" bodies and
individual 'health' as a legitimating telos of intervention. Such
governance is typical, even in cases where the clinical significance of
a stated condition is far from consensual.

The track is designed particularly to introduce and explore new
conceptual, theoretical, and methodological perspectives from different
disciplines that help advance an understanding of the complexity of
'knowing' and 'doing' bodies in medicine. Ensuing discussions will
therefore be of interest for a broad range of disciplines, from medicine
studies, medical anthropology and ethnology to epistemology and ontology
of the body, medical education and medical humanities.

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be sent by email (following
website instructions, to appear on http://www.easst.net/ ) by 15 March 2010.

Track co-ordinators would also like to remind readers of the still open
CfP for a themed issue of the journal "Medicine Studies", under the
title "Dissecting Anatomy - historical, cultural and ethical
perspectives on teaching and research", latest submission date: 10
January, 2010, see

http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/termine/id=12454

The conversation started in the context of the journal is intended to be
continued at the congress in Trent in the second half of the year.

Alan Petersen is Discipline Convenor for Sociology at Monash University,
Melbourne, Australia. He is currently undertaking a study 'Stem cell
technologies: how scientists , policymakers, and other stakeholders
engage with the public'
(http://arts.monash.edu.au/sociology/staff/apetersen.php)

Samantha Regan de Bere is a lecturer at Peninsula College of Medicine
and Dentistry in Plymouth/Exeter/Truro, England. Her research is
concerned with understanding the impact of discursive systems of
governance on complex medical 'texts'.

Antje Kampf is Associate Professor ("Juniorprofessor") for gender
aspects of the history, philosophy and ethics of medicine at Johannes
Gutenberg University Mainz Medical Center, Germany. Her research focuses
on the historical epistemology and ontology of male bodies in
biomedicine(www.uni-mainz.de/FB/Medizin/Medhist/institut/mitarbeiter/antje_k
ampf_engl.php)

Rainer Brömer is lecturer ("wiss. Mitarbeiter") at the Institute for the
History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine at Johannes Gutenberg
University Mainz Medical Center, Germany, jointly with the Institute for
Mathematics, History of Mathematics and Science Group. His main interest
regards the role of the body in human anatomy in the Ottoman Empire, ca.
1600-1900, and more generally, the history, philosophy and ethics of
medicine in the Muslim world (www.rainer-broemer.name).