Medical Humanities

It is individuals who experience firsthand sickness and health. Nevertheless, this experience is always mediated by current standards and trends in the research and practice of modern medicine. Both the knowledge that medical science produces and the ethical concerns it generates are shaped by the cultural, social and political conditions in which they are generated. Terms such as the »health society« and the »informed patient«, not to mention »evidence« and »illness«, are the products of complex interactions between science, society, culture, and politics. How these interactions play out in different places and at different times is the main research agenda of the Medical Humanities Working Group.

We are an interdisciplinary group of UZH and ETHZ postdocs engaged in interdisciplinary exchanges concerning health, illness and medicine. The present working group contains representatives from history, anthropology, philosophy, literature and theater studies and is always open to expanding the number of disciplines represented. Drawing on the Anglo-Saxon tradition of »medical humanities«, we see the notion as an opportunity to critically reflect on medical knowledge and its practices. In addition, our forum acts as an expert platform for research and teaching, with the potential to act as an intermediary between the humanities, social sciences, and medicine in these domains. We see ourselves as a productive hub for local cooperation between students, postdocs and professors both within and outside of the Center »History of Knowledge« (ZGW); by organizing workshops and attending conferences we also participate in national and international exchanges within the medical humanities.

Medical Humanities Working Group Network

The aim of the Medical Humanities network is to promote scientific exchanges and facilitate networking between researchers both within and outside of Switzerland. The ZGW website as well as an internal mailing list are available for these purposes. A first workshop organized by the Medical Humanities Working Group in Zurich in October 2016 confirmed that there was significant interest in the topic and in consolidating such a network. Following the workshop several participants expressed their wish to continue and intensify collaborations bridging topics, methods and/or theories. The Medical Humanities Working Group aims at enabling a range of collaborations through a regularly updated network list, which brings together researchers from the social sciences, humanities, and medicine working in the field of medical humanities, broadly construed. We announce internal and external events which fall within the network's range of interests on the website. The mailing list is used to exchange information and facilitate contacts between network members. Twice a year, an updated network member list is circulated internally, which contains members' research interests, disciplines, institutions, contact details and locations. If you are interested in the network and would like to participate in our mailing list, please write to infomedicalhumanities(at)ethz.ch

• • Working Group Events
• • Felicity Callard as guest in the ZGW Kolloquium October 31
• • Workshop Embodied Knowledge-revisited
• • The Emergence and Dissolution of (Medical) Knowledge: Uncertainty and Openness
• • Wissen und Objekte. Materielle Kulturen in den Medical Humanities
• • Other Events
• • Publications

Working Group Events

Felicity Callard as guest in the ZGW Kolloquium October 31

Felicity Callard (Professor of Social Research and Director of Birkbeck Institute for Social Research, University of London) will give a talk in the ZGW Kolloquium October 31, 2018 (6-8pm):

«Daydream archive: tracking normal and abnormal inner life in the clinic, factory, school, and laboratory»

Workshop Embodied Knowledge-revisited

Workshop 20./21.09.2018

organized by Dr. Sophie Witt and PD Dr. Hartmut von Sass

Hosted by the Ludwik Fleck Zentrum am Collegium Helveticum in cooperation with the ZGW (flyer)

The Emergence and Dissolution of (Medical) Knowledge: Uncertainty and Openness

One-day workshop with ZGW Guest Professor Tobias Rees (McGill University) 31.05.2017, ETH Zurich (Flyer)

Organised by Janina Kehr and Vanessa Rampton

Knowledge is not fixed, but instable, uncertain and evolving. On the occasion of Tobias Rees' sojourn as a ZGW academic guest, the workshop « The Emergence and Dissolution of (Medical) Knowledge »  asks how the uncertainty, instability and ambivalences of knowledge that Rees identifies in his brand-new book Plastic Reason play out in fields as diverse as brain science, stem cell research, mental illness, IVF, and surrogacy. 

Wissen und Objekte. Materielle Kulturen in den Medical Humanities

Workshop mit Prof. Dr. Claudia Stein

(University of Warwick, akademischer Gast am ZGW)

Ausgehend von der Annahme, dass die materielle Kultur die westliche Medizin zu einem hohen Masse geprägt hat und prägt, fragt dieser Workshop nach dem Verhältnis von Objekten und Wissen in den Medical Humanities. Was ist ein «medizinisches Objekt», wo beginnt es, wo hört es auf und was tut es?

(Programm)

Ort: Universität Zürich, Karl-Schmid-Strasse 4, K02-F-152

Anmeldungen bitte bis zum 21. Oktober an: Maria Böhmer und Anita Winkler

Other Events

Publications

Iakushevich, Marina /Ilg, Yvonne/Schnedermann, Theresa (2017): Wissenschaftliches Netzwerk "Linguistik und Medizin". Patho- und Saluto-Diskurse im Spannungsfeld von objektivierter Diagnose, interaktionaler Vermittlung und medialer Konstitution, Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik 45, 3, 422-427.

Ilg, Yvonne/Maatz, Anke (2015): Sprachliche Bilder von 'Schizophrenie' zwischen Fach- und Alltagssprache. In: Sollberger, Daniel/Kapfhammer, Hans-Peter/Boehlke, Erik/Hoff, Paul/Stompe, Thomas (Hg.): Bilder der Schizophrenie. Berlin: Frank & Timme, 65-85.

Bärnreuther, Sandra (2016), 'Innovations "Out of Place": Controversies Over IVF Beginnings in India Between 1978 and 2005', Medical Anthropology 35, 1, 73-89.

Kehr, Janina (2015), 'The Precariousness of Public Health: On Tuberculosis Control in Contemporary France', Medical Anthropology doi:10.1080/01459740.2015.1091819.

Vagneron, Frédéric (2015), 'Surveiller et s'unir? Le rôle de l'OMS dans les premières mobilisations internationales autour d'un réservoir animal de la grippe', Revue d'Anthropologie des Connaissances, dossier «La surveillance des animaux, entre biosécurité et biodiversité», 9, 2, 139-162.

Winkler, Anita (2015), 'Debating Sex: Education Films and Sexual Morality for the Young in Post-War Germany, 1945-55', Gesnerus: Swiss Journal of the History of Medicine and Sciences (themed issue: Screening Sex Hygiene Films in the first Half of the 20th Century, edited by Christian Bonah, Anja Laukötter) 72, 1, 77-93.

• • Sabine Baier
• • Peter Paul Bänziger
• • Sandra Bärnreuther
• • Maria Böhmer
• • Yvonne Ilg
• • Janina Kehr
• • Marina Lienhard
• • Vanessa Rampton
• • Frédéric Vagneron
• • Anita Winkler
• • Sophie Witt

Sabine Baier

teaches at the Department of Philosophy at the ETH, works at the Collegium Helveticum and is associated ZGW member since 2015. more

Peter Paul Bänziger

is a former coordinator of the Doctoral Program and associated

ZGW member since 2015. more

Sandra Bärnreuther

works at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies at the University of Zurich and is associated ZGW member since 2016. more

Maria Böhmer

works at the Chair for the History of Medicine at the University of Zurich and is associated ZGW member since 2015. more

Yvonne Ilg

is a member of the ZGW Graduate programme and works at the chair for German linguistics (Prof. Dr. Angelika Linke) at the UZH. more

Janina Kehr

works at the Chair for the History of Medicine at the University of Zurich and is associated ZGW member since 2015. more

Marina Lienhard

is a member of the ZGW Graduate programme and works at the Forschungsstelle für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte at the UZH. more

Vanessa Rampton

works at the Chair for Philosophy with focus on practical philosophy at ETH and is associated ZGW member since 2015. more

Frédéric Vagneron

works at the Chair for the History of Medicine at the University of Zurich and is associated ZGW member since 2016. more

Anita Winkler

works at the Chair for the History of Medicine at the University of Zurich and is associated ZGW member since 2015. more

Sophie Witt

is assistant professor (SNF-PRIMA grant) at the Deutsches Seminar of UZH and associated ZGW member since 2017. More