Interdisciplinary Research-Group
"Cultural History of Human Experimentation"
University of Bonn, Department of German Studies

deutsch

The research group analyzes the cultural history of human experimentation between 1750-2000. However, we neither focus on the role of human data for science nor on ethical judgments. Instead, we are interested in the epistemological, sociological, anthropological, and aesthetical impact of the experimental observation of human bodies and behavior: Which is the influence of data gaining techniques on the concept of human beings? How are experimental subjects chosen and examined? Is it possible to represent the borderline-experience human experiments imply - e.g. by scientific protocols, literary case studies, video footings, or fictive movies?

There are five projects that deal with these questions:

1. Case Studies. Literary Anthropology of Human Experimentation
2. Pain and Soothing. Experiments in Anesthesia in Europe and Japan
3. 'Other Women'. Gender-constructions in Biopolitical Experimental Systems 1880-1945
4. Writing Mind Control. Psychological Experiments in Poe, James, and Pynchon
5. Experiments in Representation: Borderline Experiences in Literature and Film