Events

Jointly organized by Asia Research Institute, and Department of History, National University of Singapore.

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Gregory Clancey, Asia Research Institute, and Department of History, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

Geometrical figures shape visual engagement with the world. Since the early nineteenth century series have represented history and progress as they moulded knowledge. The talk will focus on the developmental series of progressively more advanced images of eggs, embryos and fetuses that, with great difficulty, were made to show us how we all began. It will range over 250 years from the initial fashioning of series of human embryos for a few readers and museum visitors to the present day, when prenatal photos and scans define our very identities and are targets of global public health and tools of antiabortion activism. I shall review how we got here, and examine how the developmental series have worked, by exploring three dimensions of continuity and change. Inclusion in series of human embryos and fetuses has set up identities through relations to other unborn beings, to groups of humans and to other species. These series embody a progressive drive that encourages the eye to glide from one item to the next, eliding gaps and turning embryonic wastage into representations of reproductive success. The series have been organized in media that focus the producers’ work and shape the experience of viewing, from printed books and wax models to ultrasound and online video. Engaging with the challenges and contestedness of visualizing human development can offer fresh tools for historicizing, analysing and improving serial knowledge.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Nick Hopwood is Professor of History of Science and Medicine in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, and a deputy chair of Cambridge Reproduction. He is, most recently, the author of Haeckel’s Embryos: Images, Evolution, and Fraud (Chicago, 2015), which won the Levinson Prize of the History of Science Society, and co-editor of Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day (Cambridge, 2018), which is available as a highly illustrated paperback. He is finishing The Embryo Series: Imaging Human Development Before Birth and holds a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to write The Many Births of the Test-Tube Baby.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed. However, we welcome walk-ins to join us if there are available seats.