Out of the Box Series

PA Southside Clinical Unit 

Medicine and Body Image: Medicine and the Normal Body 

Presented by A/Prof Elizabeth Stephens (Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, UQ)

How did a once-obscure specialist medical term, “normal,” come to have such a defining influence on the way bodies are popularly thought about and treated in the present day? This talk will trace the curious history of the normal as it developed in nineteenth-century medicine, and reveal the surprising circumstances in which the word normal leap-frogged out of medical writing and entered everyday speech in the middle of the twentieth century.

In so doing, the presentation will show how what was once a narrowly medical concept came to have such a strong and widespread cultural impact.

Please RSVP: [email protected] 

• Date: Friday 15 February 
• Time: 5pm
• Location: TRI Auditorium