Date: Wednesday, May 7th; 4:00 - 5:00p

Location: 301 College Ave, Seminar Rm.

Note: 3:45 - 4:00p will be our reception, in the Snap Lab of 301 College Ave. After the talk, there will be a follow-up reception from 5:00 - 5:15p, also in the Snap Lab.

Abstract:

Starting in the 1980s, computing researchers began developing ways to make the human body digital. Digital image databases, deformable models, and surgical simulators all have formed part of a set of moves that are pushing medical education out of anatomy laboratories and operating rooms and into computer laboratories. This paper explores this digital shift and the ways it is allowing bodies and practices to be abstracted from the social lives of patients and the social world of the hospital. In particular, it argues that the digitization of anatomy is changing the relationship of practitioners to the body's time, space and opacity with consequences for the ways that future practitioners think about the bodies of their patients and the work that they do.

Bio:

Rachel Prentice is an assistant professor of the social, political, and ethical implications of information technology in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell. She obtained her A.B. in comparative literature from Columbia College, Columbia University, in 1987, and her Ph.D. in science, technology, and society from M.I.T. in 2004. Her dissertation, “Bodies of Information: Reinventing Bodies and Practice in Medical Education,” is an ethnography about groups of physicians, engineers, and computer experts building computer applications and simulations for teaching anatomy and surgery. She is interested in how interdisciplinary groups are creating new methods for representing and interacting with bodies.

5-1-2008 Rosemary