Concepts of Infection
image courtesy of the Wellcome Trust
an interdisciplinary conference
Bristol
29-31 March 2007
This Conference will explore the ways in which infections are
imagined, represented, and theorized. Presentations will engage with a wide
variety of aspects of infection, from historical examples of single diseases
and epidemics (such as cholera, smallpox, AIDS),
to more abstract concepts of pollution and contagion. Topics covered
include, among others: the development of our scientific understanding
of infectious disease; the ways in which ideas of infection relate to race,
gender, sexuality, imagination and conceptions of the body and of
the self; the language of infection and its use as metaphor; how real and imagined
diseases are represented in literature, film, painting,
and book illustration; and the way in which discourses of infection are employed
for political, psychological, and polemical purposes.
The Conference is interdisciplinary, aiming to be of interest
to those from the humanities and the sciences. The organisers are: Alexander
Kosenina (German), Lesel Dawson (English), Alexander Bird (Philosophy), Michael Bresalier (Philosophy and HPS, Cambridge).
The conference is grateful for generous financial support from the Wellcome Trust and BIRTHA