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Conference: "Intimate Portraits: Body Imaging Technologies in Medicine & Culture" 

On 4 April 1998, the University of California, San Francisco will host 
a free, one-day conference which may be of interest to members of the 
HISTNEUR-L list.  For details, point your browser to the conference 
program ; for 
announcements of other programs, refer to updates on RETICULUM 
.

The description of the program, from its brochure, is as follows:

"An international conference with the participation of historians and 
members of UCSF's pioneers in imaging techniques. In recent decades, 
medical imaging has created a new visual culture through new techniques 
of bodily representation. The aims of this conference are the 
examination of such novel ways of exposing the human body within the 
contexts of medicine, technology, and popular culture. 

"In recent decades, medical imaging has created a new visual culture 
through techniques of bodily representation. Modernist concepts of 
"optical dissection" and "the penetrating gaze" have taken on new  
meanings in the age of computer-assisted and high-tech postmodern body 
imaging. This interdisciplinary conference will examine both the 
technical and human aspects of these novel ways of seeing the body. 
Drawing from the fields of medicine, technology, patient narratives, 
and popular culture, presenters and panelists will explore our 
collective fascination with techniques of visibility, interrogating 
these techniques for their social, political, and historical meanings. 

"To what extent do body imaging technologies merely extend existing 
powers of analysis and surveillance in medicine and to what extent do 
they represent historically new forms of these practices? How have 
these new techniques, which have changed the way doctors intervene in 
patient's lives, changed our conceptions of disease? Of life and death? 
How do these techniques of graphic inscription become disciplinary 
modes of representation and what are the implications of this shift? In 
what ways have institutional practices and settings evolved and 
transformed in order to adapt to these powerful new ways of seeing? 

"The conference will include reflections upon the cultural and 
historical meanings of X-ray technologies, the use of imaging 
technologies in picturing illness and disease, and the impact of these 
technologies upon patients' lives. An afternoon session will focus on 
the historical role of UCSF as a pioneer in body imaging. The 
conference will conclude with audience discussion and participation. 

All events are free and open to the public. The conference is 
sponsored by the UCSF Department of History of Health Sciences with 
support from the Culpeper Fund and the UC Humanities Initiative."

___________________________________________________
Russell A. Johnson        rjohnson@library.ucla.edu

Archivist              (310) 825-3191  or  206-2753
Neuroscience History Archives
Brain Research Institute, UCLA
Box 951761     Los Angeles CA  90095-1761

Special Collections Cataloger        (310) 825-6940
Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library, UCLA
Box 951798     Los Angeles CA  90095-1798
<HISTNEUR-L@library.ucla.edu>