Artificial Life: Debating Medical Modernity (April 19-21, UC Riverside)
To debate our medical modernity means to historicize, criticize, and question the comforting narrative of society’s improving health by exploring accounts of marginalized knowledge and criticisms of the modern medical paradigm. We invite questions about the subjects of medical practice as the line between human and nonhuman, even that between organic and inorganic, is being challenged by diverse fields of scholarship. We are especially interested in papers that explore how life is being reimagined and reinvented by practices such as genetic engineering, medical prosthesis, and biochemical interventions into the body. This conference explores what it means to think of medicine and modernity under three rubrics: historical practice, the relationship between varied biomedical and non-biomedical practices, and the role of prosthetics in medicine. Topics may include:
The historical construction of health
The possibilities and limits of prosthetic interventions
The evolving definitions of life
The boundaries between physician/healer and patient
The commercialization of health
“Hacking” the body through various therapies
The role of narrative in medical outcomes
The disciplinary futures of health humanities
Please send 200-word abstracts due by February 9, 2018 to sherryl.vint@gmail.com. Notifications will be made by March 1, 2018.