Seminars will take place live and in person on Wednesdays,
2:30PM – 4:00PM
Room 101, 3647 Peel Street
Seminar and Events - Spring 2024
January 24, 2024
Shireen Hamza, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Science in Human Culture, Northwestern University
The Proximity of Masculinity: Gender, Space, and Medical Authority in Medieval Islam
February 21, 2024
Eric Plemons, University of Arizona
The Margaret Lock Seminar
What to Make of Me: penile and uterine transplant and the surgical future of sex
At the turn of the 21st century, surgeons announced a new use for transplant technology. No longer focused exclusively on vital organs that are transplanted to save recipients’ lives, transplantation could also be used for non-vital body parts meant to “enhance” their lives. The first of these “life-enhancing transplants,” or vascularized composite allografts (VCAs), replaced lost hands, arms, and faces, and were motivated by a desire to improve recipients’ quality of life by restoring capacities that, while not needed to stay alive, advocates argued were necessary to live well. The newest life-enhancing, non-vital organs to be transplantable are uteruses and penises. Like other VCAs, the transplantation of these organs aims to improve recipients’ quality of life and, for the first time in the history of modern organ transplant, the quality of life they describe is a distinctly gendered one. While current practice relies on the explicit value of male virility and female maternity, efforts that center transgender desires and capacities may signal a very different future. In this talk, I explore the development and practice of penile and uterine transplant and consider the ethical and medical implications of ongoing efforts to incorporate transgender bodies as donors and recipients of these uniquely valuable body parts.
March 13, 2024
Scott Podolsky, Harvard University
The Dr. Martin A. Entin Lecture in the History of Medicine
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Racism, and Remembrance
William Osler considered Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) "the most successful combination which the world has ever seen, of the physician and man of letters." This talk examines the shifting depiction of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., as well as Holmes's evolving considerations of hereditary determinism and race over the course of the nineteenth century, as a test case concerning the evolving evaluation of historical figures in the history of medicine, from Holmes and Osler onward.
Seminar and Events - Fall 2023
September 13, 2023
Stephen Casper, Clarkson University
Industry Capture and Traumatic Brain Injury
Who gets hurt and how when industries focus on protecting profits
Read pre-circulated paper industry_capture_and_traumatic_brain_injury_work_in_progress_31_august_2023.docx
October 25, 2023
Joelle M. Abi-Rached, Harvard University
FOR A TOPOHISTORY
Psychiatric Ruins and Sediments of Memory
joelle_abi-rached.pdf
November 1, 2023
Gordon Guyatt, MD McMaster University
6:00 PM Redpath Museum Auditorium
osler_poster-en.pdf osler_poster-fr.pdf
Would you like join our seminar list? E-mail us at ssom [at] mcgill.ca