Office: 3647 Peel St., Room 204
Phone: 398-2893
Email: cornelius.borck@mcgill.ca

Biography

Cornelius Borck's homepage on www.imgwf.uni-luebeck.de/borck.

Cornelius Borck was Associate Professor at McGill University with a joint appointment in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine and the Department of Art History and Communication Studies from 2004 to 2007. While serving at McGill, he held a Canada Research Chair in Philosophy and Language of Medicine. Since the academic year 2007/08, Cornelius Borck is Professor of History, Theory, and Ethics of Medicine and Science at the University of Lübeck in Germany where he is also Director of the Institute for History of Medicine and Science Studies. Before joining faculty at McGill in 2004, he worked at the Institute for Science Studies of the University of Bielefeld, the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and directed a research group at the Faculty of Media, Bauhaus University Weimar. By training a philosopher and a medical doctor with research expertise in the neurosciences, Cornelius Borck published widely on the history of the neurosciences, including a monograph on the cultural history of electroencephalography. His current research deals with comparative aspects of the history of medicine in the 20th century, the history of brain research between media technologies and neuro-philosophy, and the epistemology of the unnoticeable in art and science. Cornelius Borck has been appointed Adjunct Professor at McGill University and comes regularly to Montreal, most recently for the Critical Neuroscience workshop.

Publications

Selected Books

2006 Psychographien, edited with Armin Schäfer. Zurich: Diaphanes.

2005 Maß und Eigensinn. Versuche im Anschluß an Georges Canguilhem. Edited with Volker Hess & Henning Schmidgen. Munich: Fink.

2005 Hirnströme. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Elektroenzephalographie. Göttingen: Wallstein.

2001 "Mindful practices. On the neurosciences in the twentieth century,” edited with Michael Hagner. Special Issue of Science in Context 14(4), Winter.

1996 Anatomien medizinischen Wissens. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.

Articles

2006 "Between local cultures and national styles: Units of analysis in the history of electroencephalography,” Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences série Biologies 329: 450–459

2005 Sound Work and Visionary Prosthetics: Artistic Experiments in Raoul Hausmann Papers of Surrealism, issue 4.

2004 “Das künstliche Auge. Zur Geburt des Cyborg in der Sinnesprothesenforschung,” in Barbara Orland (Ed.), Artifizielle Körper - lebendige Technik. Technische Modellierungen des Körpers in historischer Perspektive. Zürich: Chronos.

2004 “Message in a bottle from ‘the crisis of reality’. On Ludwik Fleck's interventions for an open epistemology," Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35: 447-464.

2004 “Vivarium des Wissens,” in Ruth Mayer & Brigitte Weingart (eds.), Virus! Mutationen einer Metapher. Bielefeld: transcript, p. 43-60.

2002 “Urbane Gehirne. Zum Bildüberschuß medientechnischer Hirnwelten der 1920er Jahre,” Archiv für Mediengeschichte 2: 261-272.

2002 “Kopfarbeit. Die Suche nach einer präzisen Meßmethode für psychische Vorgänge,“ Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 25(2): 107-120.

2001 “Electrifying the brain the 1920s: electrical technology as a mediator in brain research,” in Paola Bertucci & Giuliano Pancaldi (eds.), Electric Bodies: Episodes in the History of Medical Electricity. Bologna: Centro Internazionale per la Storia delle Università e della Scienza, p. 239-264.

2001 “Die Unhintergehbarkeit des Bildschirms. Beobachtungen zur Rolle von Bildtechniken in den präsentierten Wissenschaften,” in Bettina Heintz & Jörg Huber (eds.), Mit dem Auge Denken. Repräsentationsformen in Wissenschaft und Kunst, Zürich: Edition Voldemeer, p. 383-394.

2001 “Mediating Philanthropy in Changing Political Circumstances: The Rockefeller Foundation's Funding for Brain Research in Germany, 1930-1950,” Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports Online 4 April 2001, http://www.rockefeller.edu/ archive.ctr/racrro1a.html.

1999 “Seizure-Like Events in Disinhibited Ventral Slices of Adult Rat Hippocampus,” with John G. R. Jefferys. Journal of Neurophysiology 82(5): 2130-2142.

1999 “Fühlfäden und Fangarme. Metaphern des Organischen als Dispositiv der Hirnforschung,” in Michael Hagner (ed.), Ecce Cortex - Beiträge zur Geschichte des modernen Gehirns, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, p. 144-176.

1999 “Brave Neuro-Worlds,” with Michael Hagner. Neue Rundschau 110(3): 70-88.