AHRB Arts, Humanities and Medicine Workshop Series: Medicine, Gender and Sexuality

Description

CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge

PLEASE NOTE THIS WORKSHOP IS NOW FULLY SUBSCRIBED

Conveners:

Professor Ludmilla Jordanova (CRASSH, College, University of Cambridge)
Professor Lorraine Sherr (UCL)

A workshop on 'Arts, Humanities and Medicine: Gender and Sexuality' has been scheduled to take place at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge on 28 February as part of the AHRB Medicine and Humanities initiative. Further details may be found at AHRB website.

Expressions of interest from those who wish to particpate in the meeting should be sent as soon as possible to lmc47@cam.ac.uk. They should include a paragraph on research interests, a very brief CV and an indication of whether overnight accommodation is needed and the likely cost of travel. Some assistance with travel and overnight accommodation where necessary is available. Participants will be expected to discuss the relationships between their work and the themes of the workshop.
Medicine, Gender and Sexuality

This workshop will aim to explore the ways in which gender and sexuality have informed the practice and theory of medicine from its earliest beginnings to the present day. Issues that may be explored include: the ways in which literature and/or visual art have interpreted the complex relationship between 'Western' medicine and other forms of healing; the ways in which notions and perceptions of sexuality and health have been shared or interrogated across cultural boundaries; the ways in which both sickness and health have been represented; the ways in which different societies treat the role of the healer (as a masculine profession, as a feminine profession, and in more complex ways); the relationship between sexual health, prostitution and the state as represented in literary and cultural context. The fundamental question of whether the discourses of medicine and of literature and art are compatible and comprehensible to each other will also be addressed, as will the issue of the ethics of writing about illness and suffering, either by patients or by witnesses.

The workshop will address issues that are of interest to the following constituencies: historians of medicine, clinicians, analysts of state policies in relation to medicine, art historians, literary critics, curators with experience of medical artefacts; experts on the full range of the medical professions and their histories, those working in fields of medicine, health and welfare that bear most directly on gender and sexuality, including sexually transmitted diseases; obstetrics and gynaecology, infertility and reproductive medicine, techniques for sex changes, psychotherapy, marriage guidance and so on.