Jessica Dandona

Associate Professor, Department of Liberal Arts, Minneapolis College of Art and Design

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Research Fellow

The Transparent Woman: Medical Visualities in Fin-de-Siècle Europe and the United States, 1890–1914

My research comprises a cross-cultural analysis of visual imagery, teaching models, and medical instruments related to the professional practice and teaching of anatomy and medicine in the United States, France, and Scotland at the end of the 19th century. The objective of this research project is to explore, analyze, and map the shift from anatomical study based on post-mortem dissection to a new mode based on the examination of living subjects both by tactile means such as bimanual palpation and surgical penetration and by increasingly non-invasive means of medical imaging, such as x-rays, as reflected in fin-de-siècle medical illustration. I examine the movement of physicians, texts, and specialized knowledge between three poles of medical education—Philadelphia, Paris, and Edinburgh.
 
Read more about Jessica's work here.

Updates

Jessica Dandona

Jessica received M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources, from the Rare Book School in Charlottesville, VA.

Jessica also has several forthcoming publications:

"The Fetus in the Museum: Personhood, Pregnancy, and Anatomical Preparations, 1850–1900," in Death in Visual Culture, special journal issue (for Mortality), ed. Jessica Orzulak and Kaylee Alexander (forthcoming 2022).

"Paper Pregnancies: Visualizing the Maternal Body, 1880–1900," in The Coming of Age of the Public Fetus: Exploring Pregnant and Fetal Bodies in Visual Culture, ed. Elisabet Björklund and Solveig Jülich (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, forthcoming 2022).

"Skeletons in the Drawing Room: Popular Consumption of Flap Anatomies, 1880–1900," in Myth and Misinformation: Constructing the Medical Professions in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century English Literature and Culture, ed. Helen Williams, Allan Ingram, and Clark Lawlor (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming 2022).

"‘The Lady Anatomist’: Fragmented Bodies, Photographic Assemblage, and the ‘Art’ of Dissection at Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1895–98," in Making Sense of Medicine: Materiality and the Reproduction of Medical Knowledge, ed. John Nott and Anna Harris (Bristol, UK: Intellect Books, forthcoming 2022).

Jessica Dandona

Jessica was was promoted to Professor in the Department of Liberal Arts, Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Jessica Dandona

Jessica has had papers related to her current book project, supported by her Consortium fellowship, accepted to IV International Conference on Medical Humanities, the Association for Art History Annual Conference and the 10th European Spring School on History of Science and Popularization.

Jessica Dandona

Jessica began a year-long fellowship as a Fulbright Scholar in the U.K. She has been named to several additional recent fellowships, including the Evelyn S. Nation Fellowship at the Huntington Library, the Boston Medical Library Fellowship in the History of Medicine at Harvard University, and the Drexel University College of Medicine Legacy Center/Library Company of Philadelphia Fellowship in the History of Women and Medicine.