News

Talk by Prof. Thomas Schlich (21 March 2024)
In the framework of the Swiss Seminar in the History of Medicine, Prof. Thomas Schlich (McGill University) will give a talk entitled
“The Best Therapeutic Option? “Elective” Interventions and the Rise of Modern Surgery (1860s-1920s)” at University of Fribourg (PER 21, Room D130, Bd de Pérolles 90, 1700 Fribourg) on 21 March 2024 from 17h-18:30h.
Online participation is possible via the following zoom link:
Zoom link
Meeting ID: 821 2782 3221
Passcode: 807825

The event is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
 
Friday 15th March 2024, 5pm:
 
Alfons Labisch
The clinical ward in medical history:
spatial climax of multiple interrelations 
 
Room 036 'Henri Dunant' /PER 17 
Chemin du Musée 18 
1700 Fribourg

New publication (December 2023)
Martina King, Tom Kindt (Eds.): Narrative Structure and Narrative Knowing in Medicine and Science (Narratologia, De Gruyter 2023)

We all think in the narrative mode, both in everyday life and in science; the latter, however, has only rarely been investigated by narratologists. The volume addresses this blind spot by analysing only non-fictional texts through the lens of both classical and postclassical narratology – from Aristotle to quantum physics and from nineteenth-century psychiatry to early childhood psychology. The articles examine the role that event-sequencing plays within scholarly and scientific communication at various points in history – and the diverse functions it serves such as eye witnessing, making an argument, inferencing or reasoning. Thus, they provide a new methodological framework for both literary scholars and historians of science and medicine.

 

SRF interview on 23.12.2023 with Chantal Britt and Martina King about LongCovid

 

 New research project (PI: Prof. Martina King)
"Narrating medical spaces in literary prose in the long 20th century"

SNSF project funding, 2023-2027

Project website

The project explores forms and functions of medical spaces in literary prose from the early twentieth century to the present, contributing to our understanding of the role of literature in the ongoing process of medicalisation.

Collaborators: PD Dr Matthias Aumüller (senior researcher) and Dr Mona Baie (doctoral student), Anna-Marie Joos (research assistant).

With a public lecture series on the topic of ‘hospitals’; speakers are eminent writers, medical historians, ethicists, and hospital architects.

Wednesday, 6.9. 2023 5-7pm, Pavillon vert:
David Wagner:
Sickrooms, corridors, hospital wards:
on the psychogeography of the hospital in 'Life' 

 

Friday, 15.3.2024, 5-7pm, Pavillon vert: 
Alfons Labisch:
The sickroom from the perspective of medical history:

spatial culmination of multiple referential systems

Further lectures by Hans Nickl (München), Samia Hurst (Genf) und Brian Hurwitz (London), detailed information soon.

 

Elisabethinen, around 1900

International Conference at the chair of Medical Humanities, 
2.-4.11. 2023

“Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. British and Continental Perspectives”

(Funded by the German Research Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Centenary Fund of the University of Fribourg)

Keynotes: David Bolt (Liverpool), Stuart Murray (Leeds), Tom Shakespeare (London), Anne Waldschmidt (Cologne); further speakers: Jenny Bergenmar (Gothenburg), Ria Cheyne (Liverpool), Harriet Cooper (Norwich), Michael Schillmeier (Exeter).

The event is part of a series of conferences of the current network “Inclusive Philology”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and co-initiated by Klaus Birnstiel (Greifswald) and Johannes Görbert (Fribourg).  Its aim is to firmly establish literary disability studies in the German-speaking countries, in close connection with international actors.

Evening Lecture by Prof. Dr. Hans-Jörg Rheinberger: "Knowing and Narrating"
Friday, 20 October 2023 | 6 pm, Pavillon Vert (Botanical Garden Fribourg)

Awarding of the Piller family prizes for the best medical students' essays in "reflective writing"

At the Bachelor Degree Ceremony of the Faculty of Science and Medicine on 28 October 2023, the prizes for the writing exercise in Medical Humanities were awarded byEdouard Piller (representative of the Fondation Joseph & Marie-Anne, Piller) and Dr. Johannes Görbert (Medical Humanities Team) to the students Alizée Lorenz and Stella Zimmerli.

Photo gallery (Graduation Ceremony)

Prize-winning essays by Alizée Lorenz „Ma santé dans le monde qui m’entoure“ and Stella Zimmerli „Keine grosse Geschichte“

Workshop in German Studies:
Intermediality, Dialogism and Concepts of 'Oeuvre' in German Avantgarde Movements

08.10.2022, 9:00-17.45, Pavillon vert (Botanical Garden)

Zur Veranstaltungwebseite

 
 

Public lecture by Martina King, National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina

13.06.2022, Halle (Saale)

Heroes, Saints, Eugenicists: The ‘doctor’ in Nazi novels - in the context of dictatorship

Event website

PDF Program

News article in „Alma&Georges“ (06.09.2022)

Interview with Martina King

21.03.2022, Der Bund

Wissenschaftseuphorie und -skepsis: Martina King sieht Parallelen zwischen der Corona-Pandemie und einem Mikroben-Hype, der die Gesellschaft vor über hundert Jahren beschäftigte.

zum Artikel

PDF Version

Interview with Martina King

04.03.2022, Bieler Tagblatt

Die Freude über die Aufhebung der Coronamassnahmen
sei verständlich, aber auch riskant, 
sagt die Seuchenhistorikerin Martina King.
 Rückblick auf eine Pandemie, die noch gar nicht zu Ende ist.

Zum Artikel

Meeting HSSuisse 2022

20.05.2022 | 9.30 – 18 Uhr, Pavillon Vert (Botanischer Garten)

This year, the annual history of science meeting for early career researchers in Switzerland is hosted by the chair for medical humanities (Martina King) and co- organized by Jasmine Lovey and Felix Rietmann. It will take place at the Pavillon Vert on Friday, May 20, 2022. To register please complete the registration form by February 15, 2022. For further information including an overview of the last meetings see: https://hssuisse.ch/, and/or write to jasmine.lovey@unifr.ch or felix.rietmann@unifr.ch.

Workshop „Physical Disability and Aesthetic Modernism”

Friday, 19. November 2021 | 9 – 17 Uhr, PER 17, Raum 036

Speakers
Prof. Dr. Klaus Birnstiel, Greifswald
Dr. Mirjam Janett, Bern
Dr. Nils Löffelbein, Düsseldorf

Moderator
Dr. Johannes Görbert, Fribourg

Download Flyer

Interview with Martina King about the decrease in life expectancy caused by the Corona pandemic

Radio SRF 4 26.10.2021

 Download audio file

Workshop: "Literature and the periodical press in the early Vormärz period (1820–1840)"

02.10.2021, Per17, Raum 036

Guests
PD Dr. Katja Mellmann (Mainz / München)
PD Dr. Madleen Podewski (Berlin)
Julian Polberg, M.A. (Wuppertal)
Dr. Nora Ramtke (Bochum) 

Download Flyer

Organisation:
zeno.bampi@gmail.com

 

Interview with Martina King on the history of vaccination
Radio Bayern 2 Kultur, 2.6.2021
Link to transcript

Interview with Martina King: Diseases as divine punishment
Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 6.6.2021
Link to show

New research project

 

Dr Felix E. Rietmann (Medical Humanities) has been awarded an Ambizione Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation for the project Raising a Well-Grown Child: Media and Material Cultures of Child Health in the Early Nineteenth Century. Situated at the intersection of media history and the history of medicine, the project explores how notions of health and illness in childhood were articulated in popular magazines and materialized in domestic, medical, and pedagogical practices in German-speaking Europe in the early nineteenth century. The project seeks to contribute to our historical understanding of the relationship between print media and medical knowledge at a time that is considered fundamental for both the emergence of the public sphere and the rise of modern medicine.

News

Baby Walker advertised in Illustrirte Zeitung in 1843
New release (october 2021)
 
‘Microbes in Modernism’
On the literary and cultural history of an ephemeral object (1880-1930)
 
The book traces the everyday cultural, aesthetic, and ethical impact of bacteriology research on the cultural epoch around 1900. It offers an integrated discursive history of the invisible, while also suggesting an alternative view of classical modernity. Its scope extends from naturalistic novels to ideological texts and includes the literary and artistic avant-garde.
 

New editorial board

 

KulturPoetik. Zeitschrift für kulturgeschichtliche Literaturwissenschaft /Journal for Cultural Poetics betrachtet Literatur als Teil der Gesamtkultur. Sie widmet sich daher den Wechselwirkungen der Literatur im Ensemble der Wissensformen und Kulturtechniken, ihrem Verhältnis zu anderen Medien und Künsten sowie ihrem Beitrag zur kulturellen und interkulturellen Kommunikation. Die Zeitschrift wurde im Jahr 2000 gegründet, ist interphilologisch und interdisziplinär orientiert. Sie veröffentlicht zweimal jährlich Beiträge in deutscher, französischer und englischer Sprache. Neben einem Aufsatzteil enthält jedes Heft auch die Abteilung ‚Forum‘, welche für Statements zu aktuellen Fragen und Debatten der Forschung zur Verfügung steht.
Bis 2021 wurde KulturPoetik herausgegeben von Benjamin Specht (Fribourg), Juliane Blank (Saarbrücken), Manfred Engel (Saarbrücken), Bernard Dieterle (Mulhouse) und Monika Ritzer (Leipzig).
Im Jahr 2021 übernahmen Martina King (Fribourg), Benjamin Specht (Fribourg), Juliane Blank (Saarbrücken) und Philip Ajouri (Mainz) die Herausgeberschaft

Journal webpage