The Margaret Lock Seminar

In honour of her 85th birthday in February 2021, the Department of Social Studies of Medicine is naming an annual departmental seminar after medical anthropologist Margaret Lock, one of the founding faculty members of the department. The Margaret Lock Seminar will showcase work in medical anthropology and closely related fields, focusing on scholars who engage topics in deep and committed ways, who offer nuanced analyses in global perspective, reflecting the spirit and richness of Professor Lock’s scholarship. SSoM faculty will collaborate with medical anthropologists in the Department of Anthropology to identify and invite speakers. The yearly Margaret Lock Seminar will also be an occasion to announce the student winner of the Margaret Lock Prize. The Margaret Lock Seminar will contribute to the continuous strengthening of ties between SSoM and Anthropology at McGill University.

Wednesday, February 4, 2026

2:30 -4:00PM 3647 Peel Street Room 101

Emily Yates-Doerr, Oregon State University          
                          

The Biologies of Memory  

Generational Half-life and the Inheritance of Affliction 

In September 1954, twenty-one-year-old Minnie Doerr developed sudden-onset lymphoma – one of several cancer cases reported in her small South Dakota town that fall. Her family and neighbors blamed nuclear testing, pointing to three days of red dust that had blanketed their farming community the previous summer. Seventy years later, memories of this cancer cluster continue to feed into distrust of federal authority and scientific expertise. This talk, based on archival and family ethnography, situates the story of Minnie's premature death within sciences linking ionizing radiation to cancer. By comparing the biologies of history (Landecker 2016) to present-day controversies about the safety of radiation exposure, the talk illustrates how memory embeds itself in bodies and communities. I conclude by discussing what Minnie’s short life can teach us about the entanglement of rumors and truth, and point to how situating biologies (Lock 1995, Niewöhner and Lock 2018) can reshape the landscape of biopolitics.

Past Speakers

2025

Anthony Stavrianakis, CNRS. "What's therapeutic about "club thérapeutique"? On the function and effects of a particular form of institutional psychotherapy"

2024

Eric Plemons, University of Arizona. “What to make of me: Penile and uterine transplant and the surgical future of sex”

2023

Kaushik Sunder Rajan, University of Chicago. “Extractions of Breath: Class Action, Racial Capitalism, and the Unfinished Business of Transitional Justice in South Africa”

2022

Nicole Charles, University of Toronto Mississauga. “Corporeal Traces and Unsettling Truths”