Bodies Turned Objects: Transinstitutionalization, Disability, and Indigeneity in the Nineteenth Century

Please join us on Monday, April 6, 3.30-5.00, for our research workshop, when we will hear Dr. Trevor Engel (UTexas-Medical Branch) discuss his research. His talk is titled: "Bodies Turned Objects: Transinstitutionalization, Disability, and Indigeneity in the Nineteenth Century.” He writes:  

In this talk, I will be giving a short overview of my book project, currently under the same title, followed by a deeper discussion of revisions to a chapter from my dissertation. Principally, my book project inspects how people’s bodies were used after death to further scientific knowledge production within medical and anthropological based collections. In the chapter I will be presenting, I explore different ways of thinking about time in relation to the bodies within these collections. Specifically, I engage with the framework of “folded objects” to think about “topological time.” This topological view of time provides new avenues to think about the ways in which 19th century scientists were constructing ideas about the people whom they collected. I also ask how different notions of time, specifically “Native” time as opposed to “Western” or “scientific” time, might complicate the way that bodies in these collections have been thought about by historical actors, historians, and ancestors.  

The talk will be followed by a reception in the Hughes Lounge in the Department of the History and Sociology of Science.