Representing the Medical Body: 28 March 2019, Science Museum, London

A one-day workshop at the Science Museum, London, organised by Katy Barrett (Curator of Art Collections) and Sarah Wade (Research Manager)

In 2019, a series of five landmark new medicine galleries will open at the Science Museum in London. A series of contemporary art commissions form a significant part of this project along with images of the human body throughout the history of art. This provides an ideal opportunity to reflect on the unique ways in which the body has been represented in relation to health and medicine through the history of art and visual culture.

This one-day interdisciplinary workshop will bring together artists, scientists and historians of art, science and medicine to explore artistic responses to medicine and representations of the medical body throughout history. Papers are invited from a range of critical frameworks including, feminist, queer, postcolonialist, posthuman and gender studies. Contributions can take a variety of forms including papers, artist's talks, films and performances. The day will end with a response from Professor Ludmilla Jordanova, Department of History, Durham University.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers. Topics might include:

• Medical models and anatomy
• Death and dying
• Medical portraiture
• Representations of disability, disease and healing
• Photography and ethnography or anthropology
• Contemporary or historical medical imaging
• The role of imagery in diagnosis

Please send a 250-word abstract and a short bio of no more than a paragraph to sarah.wade@sciencemuseum.ac.uk by the end of Sunday 20^th January 2019.

JOB - BOOKSELLER AND CATALOGUER – SCIENCE SPECIALIST

Location: Chelsea, London Salary: £25-35,000 p.a. dependent on experience plus benefits
Duration: Permanent
Hours: Full time 5 days per week to include alternate Saturdays

Peter Harrington Limited, an established antiquarian bookseller with a global presence, are seeking to appoint a cataloguer with strong scientific knowledge and interest.

JOB SPECIFICATION

Main duties and responsibilities include:
• research and cataloguing of material related to science, from antiquity to modernity
• sourcing, buying and selling stock of scientific interest
• cataloguing, buying and selling stock items of a more general natur
• representing the business at trade fairs in the UK and overseas
• maintaining current specialist knowledge of the global book trade including sources of supply, e.g. auctions, booksellers, third party websites and private individuals
• working flexibly as required to accommodate staff shortages during trade fairs and seasonal/exceptional extended opening hours

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Skills, qualifications and experience include:
 • strong interest in, and knowledge of, the history of science (essential)
• good knowledge of rare/antiquarian books and the rare book trade (desirable)
• demonstrable knowledge and experience in purchasing and selling rare books (desirable)
• a high degree of IT literacy including databases, Microsoft Office and the internet (essential)
• strong research skills (essential)
• excellent spoken and written English and excellent numeracy (essential)
• excellent interpersonal and communication skills (essential)
• the ability and confidence to deal with a wide range of people (essential)
• be free, willing, and able to travel abroad on a regular basis, both as part of a team or alone, as the company’s representative (essential)
• good team working (essential)
• the ability to work under pressure (essential)
• commercial awareness (desirable)

Applicants should request an application form from Sam Caethoven at sam@peterharrington.co.uk or 020 7591 0220

Narrative Science public seminar series

For the abstracts, and details as to the time and location, please check the website: 

15th January 2019:
Sharon Crasnow (Norco College)- 'Counterfactual Narrative in Political Science'
Phyllis Kirstin Illari (UCL)- TBA

29th January 2019:
Ivan Flis (University of Utrecht)- 'Narrating an unfinished science: Scientific psychology in late-twentieth century textbooks'
Adrian Currie (University of Exeter)- 'History is Peculiar​'

12th February 2019:
Alfred Nordmann (Technical University Darmstadt)- 'A Feeling for the Mechanism'
Eleonora Loiodice (Università degli Studi di Bari)- 'Science as a creation: Giorgio de Santillana’s approach to history of science'

26th February 2019:
Annamaria Contini (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia)- 'Metaphor as narrative reconfiguration: an example in the French physiology of the late nineteenth century'
Adelene Buckland (King's College London)- 'Plot Problems: Geological Narratives, Anti-Narratives, and Counter-Narratives in the Early Nineteenth Century'

 12th March 2019:
Sarah Dillon (University of Cambridge)- 'Reasoning by Analogy: ELIZA, Pygmalion and the Societal Harm of Gendering Virtual Personal Assistants'
Vito De Lucia (The Arctic University of Norway)- 'Reading law outside of the legal text: legal narratives'

26th March 2019:
Marco Tamborini (Technical University Darmstadt)- 'Narrating the Deep Past'
Staffan Müller-Wille (University of Exeter)- 'From Travel Diary to Species Catalogue: How Linnaeus Came to See Lapland'