STS Colloquium: Jessica Wang October 3

Jessica Wang of the UBC Department of History delivers an STS colloquium talk titled “The Telling of the Case: Rabies Narratives, Autopsy, and Medical Community in 19th-Century New York City” on Thursday, October 3, 5:00-6:30 at the Green College Coach House.

This presentation uses hydrophobia case histories and debates over post-mortem analysis as means for examining historical conceptions of rabies as a disease, the significance of the case narrative as a means of identity formation and knowledge circulation, and the interplay between autopsy and medical community among New York physicians during the second half of the nineteenth century. Literary genres ranging from the Bildungsroman to the war story, as well as heated debates and offended gentlemanly sensibilities, were all part of how discourses about rabies shaped physicians’ professional lives and the social world of New York medicine.