The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness Integration Medicine and the Great War

This event is at capacity. Registration does not guarantee seating. Seating is first-come, first-serve.

The injuries suffered by soldiers during WWI were as varied as they were brutal. How could the human body suffer and often absorb such disparate traumas? Why might the same wound lead one soldier to die but allow another to recover?

In The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe, Stefanos Geroulanos (Professor of History, NYU) and Todd Meyers (Associate Professor of Anthropology, NYU Shanghai) uncover a fascinating story of how medical scientists came to conceptualize the body as an integrated yet brittle whole. Responding to the harrowing experience of the Great War, the medical community sought conceptual frameworks to understand bodily shock, brain injury, and the vast differences in patient responses they occasioned. Geroulanos and Meyers carefully trace how this emerging constellation of ideas became essential for thinking about integration, individuality, fragility, and collapse far beyond medicine: in fields as diverse as anthropology, political economy, psychoanalysis, and cybernetics.

Join us for an in-depth discussion with the authors and other featured panelists analyzing the various themes and stories surrounding these ideas. Featuring:

Emily Martin
Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology, NYU

Samuel Moyn
Professor of Law and History, Yale University

With an introduction by Dr. Katherine E. Fleming, NYU Provost.