Provost's Distinguished Women's Lecturer: Professor Helen King - "Traveling Inside the Body: Organs, Fluids, and Representation"

Abstract

How did people in the past think about the insides of their bodies? This illustrated lecture will take us from the ancient Greeks to the twenty-first century. We will explore the role of dissection in changing professional medical views, but also the assumptions ordinary people made by using images of the body taken from their daily lives – whether that was thinking of the body as a kitchen, a garden, a factory, or a battlefield. We’ll investigate the shift from focusing on the body as a collection of fluids, to concentrating on the organs.

Co-sponsored by ISLA, Department of Classics, History and Philosophy of Science Program, Philip S. and Joan C. Coogan Endowment for Excellence in the History of Medicine, Department of History, Program for Liberal Studies, Gender Studies Program, and the ND Workshop on Ancient Philosophy.