On Making Models and Being a Model in the Nineteenth Century
| Dates: | 27 October 2015 |
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| Times: | 15:30 - 17:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Faculty of Life Sciences |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, Alumni, Current University students |
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| Speaker: | Anna Maerker |
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This seminar is part of the CHSTM Seminars Series Sept-Dec 2015. CHSTM seminars will be held fortnightly on Tuesdays at 4pm in Room 2.57 Simon Building, Brunswick Street, Manchester, M13 9PL https://goo.gl/maps/RTFk4 with tea and biscuits from 3.30pm. All are welcome and please feel free pass this list on to interested colleagues. Models have become a central element of modern knowledge production. From electronically enhanced plastic bodies for medical training to computer models of climate change, models play a key role for contemporary teaching, research and policy. However, the concept of the model defies easy definition. Philosophical work to critically evaluate its uses points to an ongoing problem of defining what counts as a model; historical scholarship has drawn attention to the cultural, social, and political contexts as crucial to our understanding of practices of model making and model use. My current research aims to contribute to this debate by providing empirical material on the historical emergence of the concept of the model in medicine, science and politics, and on the relationship between concepts and practices of modelling. The project’s focus is on the case study of a nineteenth-century model-making enterprise: the three-dimensional anatomical models developed by the French doctor Auzoux since the 1820s. The models were mass-produced at a factory, using a newly developed paper paste which allowed for the creation of robust, detachable models. The first models were life-sized, but the company soon developed miniaturised and enlarged models of human bodies, body parts, and animals. The models were exported globally to be used in medical training and general education, from medical schools in Egypt and India to lecture series by women’s rights activists and political radicals in the U.S. The concept of the model was mobilised in several ways: not only did the enterprise produce three-dimensional representations of human and animal bodies, Auzoux himself was described in biographical accounts as a model entrepreneur and citizen, while his factory was celebrated as a model for social improvement. His workers, and some colonial subjects, were singled out as ‘model students’. In the project I use the Auzoux models to investigate this diversity of meanings. One central aim of the research is to provide material to elucidate the concept of the model and its discussion in different disciplines such as philosophy and visual studies. I want to draw attention to the ways in which models are embedded in communities, and to argue that we need to understand this context to fully grasp how and why models work.
Speaker
Anna Maerker
Organisation: King's College London
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
Room 2.57
Simon Building
Manchester
