'Medicine and New Media' Summer School 2008 to be held at the Centre for the History of Medicine, Warwick University. (360G-Wellcome-085425_Z_08_Z)

The first Summer School organized by the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Warwick will explore the history of medical imaging from the Renaissance to present times. Participants will trace technological developments and their consequences in medicine, alongside consideration of how these new ways of 'seeing' the human body reflected and were shaped by the concerns of scientists, physicians, artists and the general population. Each day of the Summer School will be devoted to a particular technology and the period in which this was received as a new medium for visualizing the body and its functions. These are: print in the early modern period; photography in the nineteenth century; X-ray in the early-twentieth century; digital imaging techniques from the twentieth century through to the contemporary era. Participants will consider the meaning of images of the human body and how agreement about such meaning is negotiated (in the laboratory, in modern mass-media, public displays in museums, in university anatomy teaching). What are the epistemological, moral and philosophical consequences of our desire to picture all functions of the human body? What does it mean to be human in a world of global mass media in which the individual body is central, yet completely public and commercialised? Are there alternatives to the understanding in Western science since the nineteenth century that vision is the primary avenue to knowledge and sight takes precedence over the other senses as a tool in the analysis of living things? The emphasis of the course will be on encouraging discussion and exchanging ideas across disciplinary boundaries, yet with a focus on the history of medicine, giving emerging scholars the opportunity to work closely with senior academics and become versed in interdisciplinary debates and approaches relating to the theme. The participants will meet every morning with two experts to discuss the topic of the day. The afternoon will be reserved for activities related to the theoretical issues discussed in the morning such as digital anatomy, scanning, and photography sessions etc. A background reading pack will be sent to each participant in advance to prepare them for discussion. With the success of Medicine and New Media, the Centre hopes to hold a Summer School on a different theme every two yeas. This event figures in our proposal for a second Strategic Award on the theme 'Situating Medicine'.