Dissertation Defense: Adam Netzer Zimmer

Adam Netzer Zimmer, PhD Dissertation Defense
Thursday, August 22, 2024
10:00am-1:00pm EST in Machmer E24 and Zoom https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/j/95769392173 

Title: "Prime Harvest": The Bioarchaeology of Body Acquisition for Iceland's Early Medical Training

ABSTRACT:  **Please note: No images of human remains will be shown in the main portion of the presentation.

Dissection of the human body has been framed as a key part of western medical education for centuries. To acquire bodies, anatomists often resorted to grave robbing, opportunistic targeting of racial or religious minorities, and body trading through vast colonial knowledge networks. Bioarchaeological research, particularly by scholars of color, has shown how such body acquisition practices were a key part of colonial European nations’ social understandings of race, identity, and difference.
 
Less attention, however, has been paid to the processes of cadaver acquisition and medical teaching in more marginal European nations. Iceland was a colony of Denmark and Norway from 1626 to 1944, yet was treated very differently from other Danish colonies located in the Caribbean. Through analysis of the ancestral human remains kept in the Læknagarður medical campus in Reykjavík, this study examines how Icelandic physicians acquired human remains for anatomical research in the formative years of the Icelandic medical system. It then discusses how this knowledge was deployed in understandings of Icelandic identity. Rather than developing in isolation, this study demonstrates how Icelandic anatomists were both consumers and products of a vast colonial anatomical network. 

**Please note: No images of human remains will be shown in the main portion of the presentation.