Medicine and the Other - The Issue of Difference in Medical Knowledge and Practice of the 19th and 20th Centuries

In cooperation between the Graduate School Life Sciences – Life Writing, the Research Unit Historical Cultural Sciences (Forschungsschwerpunkt Historische Kulturwissenschaften HKW), and the Institute for History, Theory, and Ethics in Medicine at Johannes Gutenberg University, we are delighted to announce an international conference on the historical relationship between medical expertise and people marked as “others”.

These “others” were people who, as carriers of certain phenomena, became confronted with medical knowledge, practices, professionals, and/or institutions.

The historical transformation of negotiation processes between such groups and medical professionals will be diskussed, asking: What contacts existed between the respective sides, how did they function and develop over time? How did they then contribute to the shaping of identities, medical knowledge, and practice? Which similarities and differences in handling "other" people in medicine can be found between the specific cases? Which conclusions do these findings allow for cultural historiographies of the 19th and 20th centuries?

The conference will also be a forum for theoretical and methodological aspects. In this way, the conference aims to contribute to the cultural history of dealing with "diversity", not least in order to enrich current debates about "diversity" and “equality“.