Imperfect Children
A two day conference hosted by The Centre for Medical Humanities
University of Leicester, 5-7 September 2013.
We invite you to attend the conference hosted by the Centre for Medical Humanities where the controversial concept of ‘imperfect’ children will be discussed. The conference will take place on 6-7 September, at our brand new and state of the art facilities in Salisbury Road, Leicester. During the conference prominent scholars from around the world will venture to explore the concept and language of imperfection. During two whole days punctuated with lunch, tea and dinner we will consider topics such as mental or physical impairment; the ‘look’ of children; cosmetic surgery; biological or eugenic definitions of imperfection; community, familial and societal reactions to imperfection; childhood imperfection in literature and art; and the construction of feral youth in contemporary and historical populations.
Some of the fascinating lectures to be given during the conference:
- Claire Treney (Royal Holloway), ‘Insane innocents: The depiction of mentally ill children in 12th and 13th century English miracles’.
- Ally Crockford (Edinburgh), ‘Playful little Monsters: Considering the monstrous child in nineteenth-century fiction’.
- Miriam Schneider (St Andrews), ‘Imperfect immaculates: Impaired heirs to the throne and “educational experiments” in nineteenth-century European monarchies’.
- Shannon Conley (Arizona), ‘The perfect embryo: Navigating the policy discussion of pre-implantation genetic diagnostics in the UK and Canada’.
- Irmtraut Sahmland (Philipps-Universität Marburg), ‘Cretensim in the 1840s’.
- Wilfried Rudolff (University of Kassel), ‘The social and cultural construction of the handicapped child in West Germany in the Sixties and Seventies of the 20th Century’.
This conference will be of great interest to scholars of History, Archaeology, Art History and English through the social sciences and to biological and engineering or physical sciences. Due to the limited number of places please return the Imperfect Children Conference Booking Form as soon as possible.