February
28, 2003 Weissman
Center Series to Continue with
'In Utero: Imaging and Imagining' March 6
| 
Photo:
Rosamond Wolff Purcell
Rosamond
Wolff Purcell, Seven Stages of Embryonic Development
of the Human Fetus, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Complutense,
Madrid, 1993, inkjet print |
How do visual representations
of human embryos and fetuses influence our views of reproduction?
How do these images shape public debate about when human life
begins? How do they affect the science of human reproduction and
reproductive technology? Experts from the fields of developmental
biology, medical and biological visualization, and art will address
these questions and others in a panel discussion titled "In
Utero: Imaging and Imagining," set for Thursday, March 6,
at 7:30 pm in Gamble Auditorium. Preceding the discussion and
in connection with a Mount Holyoke College Art Museum exhibition
of her photographs, titled Suspended Animation: Photographs
by Rosamond Wolff Purcell, panelist Rosamond Wolff Purcell
will give a gallery talk. The talk will be held at
4 pm in the art museum's Hinchcliff Reception Hall.
The panel discussion
is part of The Political Embryo: Reconceiving Human Reproduction,
a semester-long series that features a wide-ranging discussion
of the scientific, ethical, legal, and social issues surrounding
new and developing human reproductive technologies. The series
is sponsored by the Harriet L. and Paul M. Weissman Center for
Leadership and supported by the class of 1958 and the Katherine
B. Fitzgerald Lecture Fund.
Lynn Morgan, professor of anthropology, will moderate the panel
discussion. A member of the planning committee for the series,
Morgan says the idea for the "In Utero" panel emerged
from the committee's recognition that "visual representations
of embryos and fetuses are having an important impact on the debate.
We see them everywhere: magazines, billboards, movies, television."
So common are such images, she says, that "we no longer
question how they read."
Morgan dates the onset of this proliferation of images to 1965,
the year Life magazine published a cover photograph and
a sixteen-page photographic spread of an eighteen-week-old fetus
floating in amniotic fluid. These images, taken by Swedish photographer
Lennart Nilsson, were of dead fetal specimens, which is "one
of the things that makes them interesting, because that fact was
never mentioned in the article and they 'read'—even today—as
alive," says Morgan. The publication of these images ushered
in what Morgan calls the "contemporary era" of visual
representations of human fetuses and embryos.
The history of the
visual representation of human embryos and fetuses is one of many
areas panelists will address. With this panel, says Morgan, "our
intention was to invite a group of panelists who use images of
embryos and fetuses as a part of their daily work. We chose people
who do not have an explicit political agenda, yet are citizens
of this world and are concerned about how the images are going
to be used and interpreted."
The Panelists
Bradley Richard Smith is associate professor and director of biomedical
visualization at the School of Art and Design and senior associate
research scientist in the Department of Radiology at the University
of Michigan. Smith's pioneering work in creating the technology
to visualize human embryos and to use magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) analysis of embryos revolutionized the study of developmental
biology.
Scott F. Gilbert,
Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology at Swarthmore College,
teaches developmental genetics, embryology, and the history of
biology. He is the author of the best-selling textbook Developmental
Biology, now in its seventh edition, and he continues to
do research and write in both developmental biology and in the
history and philosophy of biology.
Rosamond Wolff Purcell is a photographer and writer whose recent
work includes Special Cases: Natural Anomalies and Historical
Monsters, the award-winning Swift as a Shadow, and with Stephen
Jay Gould, Crossing Over: Where Art and Science Meet. Suspended
Animation: Photographs by Rosamond Wolff Purcell, an exhibition
featuring Purcell's photographs of biological specimens, mostly
embryos, from medical and natural history museums, will be on
display through March 14 at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.
On March 6 at 4:30 pm, Purcell will talk about the exhibition
in the museum's Hinchcliff Reception Hall.
The
counter is
2,797
|
