Culture Meets Surgery. Images, Models, and Interpretations of the Human Skull

(Last update: 09.11.2012)

Thursday, 08.11.2012

16.00
Ernst-Johannes Haberl (Charité Berlin)/Sigrid Weigel (ZfL): Introduction

16.30
Martin Kemp (Oxford): Feeling Bullish? Reading and representing faces in the visual arts from the Renaissance to now



Friday, 09.11.2012

9.30–11.30
Matt Jones (San Francisco): The quick character read. Designing heads for animated films

Hans-Florian Zeilhofer (Basel): The art of planning and performing cranio-maxillofacial surgery


12.00–14.00
Uta Kornmeier (ZfL):  Michelangelo’s scalpel. Proportion studies in classical art and contemporary surgical literature

Stefan Zachow (Berlin): Three-dimensional morphometry. Building an objective for surgical reconstruction of cranial deformities

Attention! Change in schedule:
15.00–17.00
Nichola Rumsey (Bristol):  Perceptions of facial differences. What motivates people to seek cosmetic surgery?

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (Atlanta): Extraordinary Faces


17.30
Simon Strick (ZfL): Children’s cranial deformation. A 19th-century genealogy

18.15
James T. Goodrich (New York): Manipulating cranial bones. A cultural and surgical survey


Saturday, 10.11.2012

9.00
Working Breakfast: Frame-based cranial surgery (New surgical techniques and instruments)
Presenter: Ernst-Johannes Haberl (Berlin)
Please register for this event separately with Sarah Affenzeller


11.00–13.00
Jeanette Kohl (Riverside): Busts and Bones. Sculpted Heads in the Renaissance

Sigrid Weigel (ZfL): Carl Gustav Carus and the symbolic interpretation of the human shape


14.00–16.00
Richard Neave (Manchester):  Uncertainties of soft tissue prediction in facial reconstruction

Thomas Schnalke, Andreas Winkelmann (Berlin): Skull research. Dealing with »human remains« in view of recent restitution demands


16.30–18.30
Panel discussion: Collaborating with the humanities: A challenge for plastic surgery?
Chair: Michael Hagner (Zurich)
Discussants:
Ernst-Johannes Haberl (Berlin)
Mark R. Proctor (Boston)
Concezio di Rocco (Rome)

Although surgical techniques of cranial reconstruction have advanced in recent years, altering a person’s head shape by operating on cranial bones is still a serious intervention into the body, especially for children. Yet, what constitutes the physical outcome of the intervention – i.e. the ›normal‹ head shape – and why it is of significance to the individual patient is rarely discussed in the medical literature, making the procedure difficult to plan, perform, evaluate, and teach. Thus, surgeons must rely on their subjective judgement when it comes to ›correcting‹ cranial deformities. What constitutes this judgement when medical textbooks fail at this point?
There seems to be an implicit cultural knowledge which guides surgeons and patients’ families when judging a head as ›normal‹ or ›deformed‹. This knowledge may be informed as much by personal or professional experience as by popular beliefs and representations in the media. Drawing to light what is entailed in such judgements seems an essential basis for making the decision to operate.
The aim of the conference is to establish an interdisciplinary dialogue in order to examine the cultural and epistemological premises of shaping the human head and to discuss current practices of plastic surgery in view of their history.

Event for ZfL semester theme: An/Sichten Winter 2012/2013