Titel: The Body as Interface: Dialogues between the Disciplines

Termin: 26.6.2003 bis 28.6.2003

Veranstaltungsort:
University of Bonn
Regina-Pacis-Weg 3
53113 Bonn
Germany

Referenten: Prof. Thomas Laqueur (Historian, University of California, Berkeley, USA); Prof. Dr. Nüsslein-Volhard; Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin); Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Bronfen (literatur and culture scientist, University of Zurich, Switzerland); Prof. Dr. Oliver Brüstle

Kurzbeschreibung: The body has been at the center of debates in gender and cultural studies for more than two decades. The performativity of gender, the establishment and subversion of sexual norms as well as the significance of parameters such as race and class for the construction of the body have been among the crucial concerns of this ongoing discussion. Recent controversies about the ramifications of biotechnology, bioethics, and cybernetics likewise capitalize on the body, while at the same time shifting the debates in the direction of the social science, the natural science, and law.

The symposium on "The Body as Interface" will situate the body at an intersection of a range of discourses within the cultural and natural sciences, discourses that we have tended to dissociate, yet which we come to increasingly recognize as being interdependent. The debates around bioethics in particular underline that the answers to the most crucial questions that have evolved require an exchange across disciplinary lines. And while we do not presume to answer those questions we are convinced of the importance of such dialogues on the way to possible answers. Accordingly, the symposium's subtitle is meant to be programmatic for the symposium as a whole, both thematically and structurally.

One of the central questions within our dialogues is how the shift from cultural to biological perspectives on the body has impacted on gender and cultural studies. Are the recent debates at the crossroads of the cultural, social, and natural sciences extensions of a research that has interpreted discourses on the body as major agents in the construction of gender and power? Do the recent debates of the body within the biosciences and law eliminate the political concerns that gender studies inherited from feminist critique? Or do they pick up on and reformulate those concerns, both politically and ethically?

Kontakt: North American Studies Program
University of Bonn
English Department
Prof. Dr. Sabine Sielke
Regina-Pacis-Weg 5
53113 Bonn

phone: +49 - 228 / 73 76 64
fax: +49 - 228 / 73 79 48

ssielke@uni-bonn.de
http://www.nap.uni-bonn.de

Veranstalter: North American Studies Program

Schlagworte: Biotechnologie, Genforschung/-technik