Todd Meyers

Today I talk with medical anthropologist Todd Meyers about COVID, vulnerability, and the ways we process the aftermath of a disaster. Todd Meyers is a medical anthropologist whose work moves between ethnography, visual culture, and the history of medicine. He joined McGill University's Department of Social Studies of Medicine as the Marjorie Bronfman Chair in Social Studies of Medicine last year.  Before that he was at New York University's Shanghai campus, where he directed the Center for Society, Health, and Medicine.  He is the author and editor of several books, most recently "A Cultural History of Medicine in the Modern Age," which came out from Bloomsbury earlier this year, and "The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe," which he wrote with the historian Stefanos Geroulanos, published by University of Chicago Press in 2018.  His new ethnography, which deals with issues of loss and aftermath, "All That Was Not Her," will be published by Ducke University Press this coming February.

We are joined by our special guest Todd Meyers in today's episode.

2021 - 04 - 22 Todd Meyers Earth Day by KGMI News/Talk 790

 In this second episode of Talking Culture’s mini-series on the topic of COVID-19, host Alejandra Melian-Morse talks with Dr. Todd Meyers, who will be joining the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill as the Marjorie Bronfman Chair in Social Studies in Medicine this coming Fall. Their conversation ranges from war metaphors in relation to COVID to the intimacy of care in clinics and hospitals while also tackling issues surrounding the future of anthropology and what it will mean to address the issues that have been made clear due to the Pandemic.Produced by Alejandra Melian-MorseArtwork design by Alejandra Melian-Morse, Artwork attribution: Boca Vectors by VecteezyMusic by Justin CoberProduced with support from McGill University’s Department of Anthropology

The prologue to The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War (University of Chicago Press, 2018) begins by provocatively invoking a question American physiologist Walter Cannon first asked in 1926: “Why don’t we die daily?” In the erudite chapters that follow, Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers explore how practitioners and theorists working during and after World War I tried to answer that very thorny problem in light of the challenges of wound shock. This functional disorder demanded that doctors, surgeons, and physiologists account for two medical realities: first, that wound shock was a whole-body, multi-systemic response to trauma; and second, that a fairly homogenous group—namely the young, male soldier-patient—responded to wound shock in highly variable and individuals ways. Whereas the historiography of World War I and trauma has largely focused on psychopathological models, Geroulanos and Meyers illuminate how the work of Henry Head, Réné Leriche, Kurt Goldstein and others enacted a wholesale transformation of the concept of the individual, one that would define medico-physiological individuality as an integrated and indivisible body, but one constantly on “the verge of collapse.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

The prologue to The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War (University of Chicago Press, 2018) begins by provocatively invoking a question American physiologist Walter Cannon first asked in 1926: “Why don’t we die daily?” In the erudite chapters that follow, Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers explore how practitioners and theorists working during and after World War I tried to answer that very thorny problem in light of the challenges of wound shock. This functional disorder demanded that doctors, surgeons, and physiologists account for two medical realities: first, that wound shock was a whole-body, multi-systemic response to trauma; and second, that a fairly homogenous group—namely the young, male soldier-patient—responded to wound shock in highly variable and individuals ways. Whereas the historiography of World War I and trauma has largely focused on psychopathological models, Geroulanos and Meyers illuminate how the work of Henry Head, Réné Leriche, Kurt Goldstein and others enacted a wholesale transformation of the concept of the individual, one that would define medico-physiological individuality as an integrated and indivisible body, but one constantly on “the verge of collapse.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

The prologue to The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War (University of Chicago Press, 2018) begins by provocatively invoking a question American physiologist Walter Cannon first asked in 1926: “Why don’t we die daily?” In the erudite chapters that follow, Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers explore how practitioners and theorists working during and after World War I tried to answer that very thorny problem in light of the challenges of wound shock. This functional disorder demanded that doctors, surgeons, and physiologists account for two medical realities: first, that wound shock was a whole-body, multi-systemic response to trauma; and second, that a fairly homogenous group—namely the young, male soldier-patient—responded to wound shock in highly variable and individuals ways. Whereas the historiography of World War I and trauma has largely focused on psychopathological models, Geroulanos and Meyers illuminate how the work of Henry Head, Réné Leriche, Kurt Goldstein and others enacted a wholesale transformation of the concept of the individual, one that would define medico-physiological individuality as an integrated and indivisible body, but one constantly on “the verge of collapse.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers are anthropologists who have an interest in studying film for its value in a way to view the world. In Violence’s Fabled Experiment (August Verlag, 2018), they examine three filmmakers: Werner Herzog, Joshua Oppenheimer, and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. Each artist is known for interesting, but controversial films that feature violence in different ways. In the book, Richard and Todd both critique and praise the importance of each and their methods and subjects.Richard and Todd are co-authors of the book, Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible. I interviewed them previously for this book in 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers are anthropologists who have an interest in studying film for its value in a way to view the world. In Violence’s Fabled Experiment (August Verlag, 2018), they examine three filmmakers: Werner Herzog, Joshua Oppenheimer, and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. Each artist is known for interesting, but controversial... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers are anthropologists who have an interest in studying film for its value in a way to view the world. In Violence’s Fabled Experiment (August Verlag, 2018), they examine three filmmakers: Werner Herzog, Joshua Oppenheimer, and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. Each artist is known for interesting, but controversial films that feature violence in different ways. In the book, Richard and Todd both critique and praise the importance of each and their methods and subjects.Richard and Todd are co-authors of the book, Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible. I interviewed them previously for this book in 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology