Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Swann Fellow Lecture, Tuesday, March 12 in Library of Congress

Were They so Torturous? Reevaluating Modern Surgery's Underdog Story
12:00-1:00 pm Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Swann Fellow Lecture
Dining Room A, 6th Floor Madison Building

Swann Fellow, Zoe Copeman, PhD candidate in Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, argues that the history of surgery relies on the narrative of
surgery's so-called "torturous" past to legitimize the practices of elite, university-trained medical men, reducing the once valued work of middling and lower-class practitioners to quackery. Drawing from the Library of Congress's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century caricatures, her research traces changes in the public perception of surgery and how visual media across disciplines would transform the surgeon (and his tools) into powerful metaphors of European and American modernity. This event will be recorded.

For more information:
Sara W. Duke, Curator, Popular & Applied
Graphic Art, sduk@loc.gov

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