Damaging the Body: Medical and Social Concepts of Harm (event series)

The issue of what exactly comprises damage to the physical body appears in a number of contemporary debates within medicine and more widely, and forms the main topic of the Museum’s Friends’ Secretary’s PhD research. For example, what constitutes modern categories such as “self-harm”, addiction and cosmetic body modification, and how have these been constructed medically and socially in relation to body, mind and self? Such topics have been previously explored by the “Damaging the Body” seminar series, co-organised by the Friends’ Secretary. By adopting a historical perspective, this seminar series has encouraged reflection on medical and non-medical concepts of damage, suggesting that the very idea of “damage” is problematic and unstable. Two forthcoming debates will explore these issues in more detail, providing four very different perspectives on a particular topic before opening up discussion to a public audience.

On Monday 21 May, St Bartholomew’s Hospital Pathology Museum & Gallery will host Foreign Bodies? – Self-Injury, Surgery and Performance, a panel discussion considering the variety of ways in which acts and objects are attributed medical, social, political and aesthetic meaning. Drawing on their own research relating to the topic of so-called self-inflicted injury within history, literature and the arts, specialists will open up broader philosophical and historical ideas for debate with the audience. Speakers are: Emma Spary (University of Cambridge); Louise Hide (Birkbeck Pain Project, Birkbeck, University of London); Mary Cappello (University of Rhode Island) and Dominic Johnson (Queen Mary, University of London). For full titles and event details, visit the Damaging the Body website.

On Thursday 28 June, in conjunction with the University of the West of England Gender Studies Research Group, a debate at the Watershed in Bristol will discuss Eating Disorders and Gender in Culture, Psychology, History and Literature. Discussion will focus on cultural, historical and literary depictions of anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders. It will question how eating disorders are (or have been) perceived differently in relation to gender, thereby interrogating in what ways – biologically, culturally, and symbolically – extreme under-eating has been seen to damage male and female bodies differently and how this damage is described and contextualized in gendered terms. Speakers are: Charlotte Boyce (University of Portsmouth); Helen Malson (University of the West of England); Neula Kerr-Boyle (UCL) and Debra Ferreday (Lancaster University).

Both events will start at 6.30pm, with admission from 6pm. There is no need to book and admission is free. Refreshments will be provided. For more information on the “Damaging the Body” project, visit the website.

“Damaging the Body”: New Seminar Series

We may think that the idea of “damage” to the physical body is self-evident, but countless historical, anthropological and social studies have indicated that concepts of damage emerge through a variety of concerns. An ongoing seminar series, funded by the Wellcome Trust, explores such questions from both medical, cultural and individual perspectives. How, the seminars ask, are such modern categories as self-harm, addiction and cosmetic body modification constructed in relation to ideas of body, mind and self? By presenting these topics from a historical perspective, this seminar series encourages reflection on medical and non-medical concepts of damage, which, it will be argued, cannot be regarded as a natural category. The very term “damage” is problematic and unstable, and often defies definition.

The first seminar takes place at the Wellcome Library this evening, at 6pm. Historian Åsa Jansson will discuss the way in which the concept “suicidal” emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, and was differentiated from “suicide” itself. How did Victorian asylum psychiatrists determine “suicidal” as a medical concept, and what was its perceived relation to the diagnosis of “melancholia”? Further seminars, in April and May, will give similarly challenging perspectives on changing models of alcohol harm, and debate around “vitriol” (acid) throwing in Victorian Britain. Two further panel sessions in London and Bristol will encourage increased debate in the topic. On 21 May in London, the anatomical specimens of the St Bartholomew’s Hospital Pathology Museum will provide an intriguing background to the topic of the relation of the “foreign body” to the human body: anatomically, surgically and in individual experience. In Bristol,on 28 June, a panel of experts will offer varying perspectives on the way in which ideas of “eating disorders” are, and have been, expressed in gender-specific terms.

For full details of seminars, and to join the mailing list to receive full details of the panel sessions when available, visit the Damaging the Body website. All events are free of charge.