Zoe Copeman to deliver talk as Library of Congress Swann Fellow

Zoe Copeman pulls the curtain back on the surgical theaters of early modern history

Zoe Copeman, PhD candidate in the Department, is a Swann Fellow at the Library of Congress, in which capacity she will deliver a talk on Tuesday, March 12th at noon as part of the Lectures & Symposia series of the Prints & Photographs Division in the 6th-floor Dining Room A of the Madison Building on the LOC campus.

Her talk, entitled "Why Were They so Torturous? Reevaluating Modern Surgery's Underdog Story," explores the history of surgery relies on the narrative of surgery’s so-called “torturous” past to legitimize the practices of elite, university-trained medical men, reducing the once valued work of middling and lower-class practitioners to quackery.

Drawing from the Library of Congress's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century caricatures, her research traces changes in the public perception of surgery and how visual media across disciplines would transform the surgeon (and his tools) into powerful metaphors of European and American modernity.

Congratulations Zoe, and good luck!