Science, Technology, and Society Program, Historical Studies Program, Experimental Humanities Program, American and Indigenous Studies Program, and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Present
Head-and-Shoulder-Hunting in the Americas:
Walter Freeman and the Visual Culture of Lobotomy
Thursday, February 11, 2016
RKC 103
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Miriam Posner,
Program Coordinator & Core Faculty,
Center for Digital Humanities, UCLA
Between 1936 and 1967, Walter Freeman, a prominent neurologist, lobotomized as many as 3,500 Americans. Freeman was also an obsessive photographer, taking patients’ photographs before their operations and tracking them down years — even decades — later. In this presentation, Miriam Posner details her efforts to understand why Freeman was so devoted to this practice, using computer-assisted image-mining and -analysis techniques to show how these images fit into the larger visual culture of 20th-century psychiatry.Program Coordinator & Core Faculty,
Center for Digital Humanities, UCLA
For more information, call 845-752-4385, e-mail [email protected],
or visit http://eh.bard.edu/.
Time: 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5
Location: RKC 103