Part of the Reynolds-Finley Lecture Series, hosted by UAB Libraries Historical Collections

Delivered by Heidi Hausse, Ph.D., and Chad Rose, Ph.D.

Artifacts of limb prostheses can provide crucial insight into the little-known lived experiences of premodern amputees, who have left historians few direct sources to study. Yet, such objects are rare and incredibly fragile. This talk presents findings from a collaborative effort by a historian and a mechanical engineer at Auburn University to experiment with printed 3D models of historical prostheses. Using one sixteenth-century mechanical hand from Germany as a foundational case study, we developed and ran experiments to learn about the unknown wearer’s experience using the prosthesis. This experimental approach offers a much-needed way forward in exploring the world of premodern amputees.

Heidi Hausse (she/her) is Associate Professor of History at Auburn University and author of the monograph The Malleable Body: Surgeons, Artisans, and Amputees in Early Modern Germany (Manchester University Press, 2023). She holds a PhD from Princeton University and was a member of the Society of Fellows at Columbia University before joining Auburn in 2018. Her research focuses on the intersections of culture, medicine, disability, and technology in sixteenth-and-seventeenth-century Europe. Besides articles in scholarly journals, she recently published about early modern prostheses in The Washington Post and has an upcoming piece on prosthetics through history in Smithsonian Magazine. She is currently collaborating with Dr. Chad Rose, a mechanical engineer, to experiment with a 3D-printed prototype of a sixteenth-century prosthetic hand.

Chad G. Rose (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University, and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin before joining Auburn in 2020. Dr. Rose’s primary research focus is on the design and control of robots to rehabilitate, assist, or augment human motor and sensory function. In addition to the collaboration with Dr. Hausse, his current areas of active research include the design of assistive wearable devices, context-aware and sEMG-based control of exoskeletons, design of upper extremity robotic neurorehabilitation interventions and sensorimotor function assessment, tremor classification and suppression, human-robot interaction, and haptic device design. He is also the co-advisor to the Auburn Space Technologies and Robotics (ASTRO) club.

Accreditation Statement

The University of Alabama Heersink School of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The University of Alabama Heersink School of Medicine designates this Regularly Scheduled Series for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

The University of Alabama Heersink School of Medicine is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.