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Body Projects III: Imaging and (Re)Imagining Bodies in States of Health, Wellness, and Illness
 
 

August 17 to 20, 2000
This will be the third in the series of Body Projects organized by the Humanities Research Unit at the University of Saskatchewan. This Project will emphasize new imaging technologies such as fiber optics, magnetic resonance, ultrasound, and computerized tomography which claim to make "the natural world" visible while promising greater understanding of the human body and of life itself. These visual technologies, like their historical antecedents, have had a profound impact on human self-understanding and interaction, not least because they obscure or ignore some bodily features in order to make others more visible than hitherto. What was true of human dissection, the microscope, and the x-ray, is at least as true of recent innovations which have, perhaps, achieved an unprecedented reimagining of the human body. These enhancements of the medical gaze are contributions to science, but they have consequences also for broader professional and popular assumptions and debate about the relation between health and knowledge. Grounded in discourses of race, class, gender, sexuality, and colonization, the human body is available to us only through such mediations and hence as a contested scientific, ethical, imaginative, and social site.

Venue:
Colleges of Medicine and Arts and Science, University of Saskatchewan
 
 

Preliminary Schedule

THURSDAY AUGUST 17, 2000
7:00 - 8:00 p.m. PLENARY SPEAKER: Louise Halfe

 
8:00 - 10.00 p.m. Welcome Reception

 
FRIDAY AUGUST 18, 2000
8:30 - 8:50 a.m. Welcoming Comments

 
9:00 - 10:00 a.m.PLENARY SPEAKER: Pat Kaufert (University of Manitoba)
"A Menopause for the 21st Century: Cyborgs, Flower women and the Problem of Time"

 
10:15 - 11:30a.m. CONCURRENT SESSIONS

 
A. IMAGING REPRODUCTION

 
Boucher, Joanne (University of Winnipeg) 
"'A Window to the Womb?': Obstetric Ultrasound and the Abortion Rights Debate"

 
James, Susan (Laurentian University) and Brenda Cameron (University of Alberta) 
"Researching Embodied Experiences"

 
Luce, Jacquelyn (York University) 
"Image Making and Image Breaking: Lesbian/Bi/Queer Women and Technological Tales of Reproduction"

 
B. BODY AND SPIRIT

 
Boisvert, Jennifer (University of Regina) 
"Shadow life: A Visual Diary of Hope in an Anorexic Woman"

 
Forsyth, Louise (University of Saskatchewan) 
"Embodied Technologies of Ecstasy and Resistance: Nicole Brossard's Baroque at Dawn"

 
Taylor, Georgina M. (University of Saskatchewan) 
"'The Big Little Woman': Violet McNaughton's Identity as a 'Small but Mighty' Champion"

 
11:30 - 1:00 LUNCH BREAK

 
1:00 - 2:00 PLENARY SPEAKER: Jonathan Sawday
Female Bodies: A Study in Disgust

 
2:15 - 3:30 CONCURRENT SESSIONS

 
A. PERSPECTIVES ON (DIS)ABILITIES

 
Epp, Timothy D. (York University) 
"Disability, Discourse and Experience: People First and Neoconservatism in Ontario"

 
MacEachen, Ellen (University of Toronto) 
"The Body, the Economy, the State, and Repetition Strain Injury: Will Imaging Technology Help to Ease the Pain?"

 
Phillips, Cassandra (University of Saskatchewan) 
"Re-Imagining the (Dis)Abled Body"

 
Savarese, Josephine (McGill University) 
"The Gifts of the Chip? The Regulation of Occupational Health and Safety in the Post-Industrial Age"

 
B. IMAGINATIVE REFLECTIONS AND REFRACTIONS

 
Kinzel, Laura (Independent Artist) 
"The Cultural Practice of Speculations"

 
Friesen, Bernice (University of Saskatchewan) 
"Anti-Magazine: Sculpting and Scoping Women's Bodies"

 
Gazzola, Bart (University of Saskatchewan) and Bev McNaughton (University of Western Ontario) 
"Cleaving/Adam's Second Wife"

 
Duvall, Linda (Artist) and John Loewy (University of Saskatchewan) 
"Imaging Medical Imaging"

 
3:45 - 5:00 CONCURRENT SESSIONS

 
A. TECHNOLOGICAL AND MEDICAL GAZES

 
Coulthard, Lisa (University of Toronto) 
"Meat: The Body in Contemporary Art by Women"

 
Polzer, Jessica (University of Toronto) 
"Investigating Mole Talk: Genetic Testing and Self-Surveillance of the At-Risk Body"

 
Rendell, Joanne (University of Sheffield) 
"Guibert and the Medical Gaze"

 
B. MEDICALIZING AND SEXUALIZING BODIES

 
Durfy, Samantha (University of Waterloo) 
"Medicalization of the Body: A Theoretical Analysis"

 
Dent, Beverley (University of Saskatchewan) 
"(Re)Imagining and Normalizing Human Diversity"

 
Lord, Susan (Queen's University) 
"Feminist Visual Practices of Interrogating the Visual Landscape of the Contemporary Medical Body"

 
Dinner On Your Own Friday Evening

 
SATURDAY AUGUST 19, 2000
9:00 - 10:00 Brian Turner (Cambridge University)
"Does the Hammer Any Longer Fit the Anvil? Technology and the Body in Modern Society"

 
10:15 - 11:30 CONCURRENT SESSIONS

 
A. EMBODIED STORIES OF REPRODUCTION

 
Dowedoff, Penny (Memorial University) 
"Women as Infertility Narratives: Renegotiating the Concept of the Body"

 
Emberley, Julia (University of Northern British Columbia) 
"Stories from The Patient Body"

 
Relke, Diana M.A. (University of Saskatchewan) 
"Reversing the Field: Mother-Figure/ Father-Ground"

 
B. POPULAR CULTURE AND CORPOREALITY

 
Jeffreys, Mark (University of Alabama) 
"Genetic Sequencing as the Imaging of Future Bodies in Andrew Niccol's Gattaca: Biology Meets Culture at the Dinner Table"

 
Marchessault, Janine (York University) 
"Popular TV Medical Shows and the Way They Dramatize New Medical Technologies"

 
Palmer, Joy (Michigan State University) 
"(Un)Traceable Accountability: Bodies, Evidence, and the Cult of Forensic Detection"

 
11:30 - 1:00 LUNCH BREAK

 
1:00 - 2:15 CONCURRENT SESSIONS

 
A. BODY TALES

 
Saklofske, Jon (McGill University) 
"'Tales Worked in Blood and Bone': Visual Images and Text as Scalpel and Suture"

 
Rimke, Heidi (Carleton University) 
"Making the Invisible Visible Through an Hermeneutics of the Body: The Case of Moral Insanity"

 
Klee, Wanda G. (University of Marburg) 
"Incarnating Decadence: Body Practices in Oscar Wilde and J.-K. Huysmans"

 
B. VISUALIZING THE EMBRYO AND FETUS

 
Adams, Greg P. (University of Saskatchewan) 
"Animal Modelling of Human Reproductive Disorders"

 
Martel, Jocelyn (University of Saskatchewan) 
"Clinical Challenges From Embryo to Fetus"

 
Pierson, Roger A. (University of Saskatchewan) 
"Invasive Procedures in Maternal-Fetal Medicine"

 
2:30 - 3:25 SESSION

 
A. VISIONS OF LIFE AND DEATH

 
Berman, Elaine (Queen's University) 
"Medical Images of Thin Bones, Media Images of Old Crones: The Construction of Osteoporosis as Epidemic"

 
Burfoot, Anne (Queen's University) 
"Feminist Discoveries in Representations of Popular and Professional Cultures of Biotechnology"

 
Reuter, Shelley (Queen's University) 
"Private Bodies, Public Spaces and Women's Psychic Wellbeing: Psychoanalytic Discourse of Agoraphobia"

 
Rosanne Kennedy, (Australian National University), "Witnessing Bodies: War, Trauma and Masculinity in Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy"

 
6:30 - 7:00 p.m. Reception

 
7:00 - ? BANQUET (with Joe Kaufert)

 
Speakers by Institutional Affiliation
 

Sponsors:
Humanities Research Unit, and Department of Women's and Gender Studies, University of Saskatchewan

Conference Convenors:
Lesley Biggs and Pamela Downe (Women's and Gender Studies, U of S); and Len Findlay (HRU)
 
 

Contact:
Dr. L.M. Findlay
Humanities Research Unit
c/o English Department
University of Saskatchewan
Arts Building
9 Campus Drive
Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A5
Telephone: (306) 966-5506    Telefax: (306) 966-5951
Email: humanities.research@usask.ca