Face/On: The Debates About Isabelle Dinoire

Time: 12-1pm

Location: Annenberg School, Room 500 (5th Floor), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

buffet lunch @ 11:45 a.m. [first-come, first-served]

Abstract: Facial allograft surgery, commonly known as the face transplant, briefly incited tremendous controversy and discomfort. Here, I explore the journalistic framing of the procedure immediately following the first surgery in France in 2005. The earliest news narratives were cautiously positive, celebrating the practical advantages of the procedure for (recipient) Isabelle Dinoire and future patients. As details about the specific case emerged, coverage shifted dramatically in tone as both the doctors involved and Dinoire herself were critiqued and criticized. While broad bioethical concerns provided the ostensible framework for these challenges, the underlying narrative rested on a discomfort with Dinoire’s own right to the procedure, which occupied an ambiguous space between medically necessary reconstruction and elective aesthetic surgery.

Sharrona Pearl is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication. An expert on physiognomy – the study of facial features and their relationship to character traits – she previously was a postdoctoral fellow in the Committee on Degrees in History and Literature and in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University, and received the Swann Foundation Fellowship for Caricature and Cartoon at the Library of Congress. Her research has resulted in a book published by Harvard University Press, and multiple articles and book reviews. She has served as the keynote speaker for the Kern Conference in Visual Communication.