Stuntkid: Anatomically Correct

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Anatomical Asphyxia

Anatomical Asphyxia

Anatomical Apnea

Anatomical Apnea

Anatomical Scar

Anatomical Scar

Jason Levesque labels himself as a Drawler, Designer, and Do’er of stunts, hence the name, Stuntkid.  Jason draws his main subject matter, women, with a light and delicate, yet edgy style, which is reflected well in his “Anatomically Correct” series above.  Love the ghosted skeleton beneath these women, makes them look as if they’re made of glass.

Also take a look through his photography, which is just as intriguing as his illustrations!

[spotted by Danielle Nadia Simm]

"The Secret Museum" Exhibition Opening, Observatory, This Saturday, April 10, 7-10 PM

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This Saturday, April 10th, Observatory in Brooklyn, New York will be hosting the opening party for my new exhibition "The Secret Museum." Full details follow. Hope to see you there!

Exhibition: "The Secret Museum"
Opening party: Saturday April 10th, 7-10 PM
On view from April 10th-May 16th
Admission: Free

An exhibition exploring the poetics of hidden, untouched and curious collections from around the world in photographs and artifacts, by Joanna Ebenstein, co-founder of Observatory and creator of Morbid Anatomy.

Photographer and blogger Joanna Ebenstein has traveled the Western world seeking and documenting untouched, hidden, and curious collections, from museum store-rooms to private collections, cabinets of curiosity to dusty natural history museums, obscure medical museums to hidden archives. The exhibition “The Secret Museum” will showcase a collection of photographs from Ebenstein’s explorations–including sites in The Netherlands, Italy, France, Austria, England and the United States–which document these spaces while at the same time investigating the psychology of collecting, the visual language of taxonomies, notions of “The Specimen” and the ordered archive, and the secret life of objects and collections, with an eye towards capturing the poetry, mystery and wonder of these liminal spaces. In tandem with this exhibition, Ebenstein has organized a 2 week “Collector’s Cabinet” at the The Coney Island Museum, which will showcase astounding objects held in private collections, including artifacts featured in her Private Cabinet photo series of 2009.

To download press release, which includes sample images, please click here.

ASSOCIATED LECTURES AND EVENTS
Congress for Curious People at the Coney Island Museum
2-day symposium exploring the idea of collecting curiosities in the 21st century as well as the politics, history, and changing methodology of collecting and collections. Also on view will be “The Collector’s Cabinet,” an installation of astounding artifacts held in private collections. A week of themed lectures at the Coney Island Museum will precede the symposium:

The Saddest Object in the World
An Illustrated Meditation by Evan Michelson, Obscura Antiques and Oddities, Morbid Anatomy Library Scholar in residence
Date: Monday, April 12th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: * Coney Island Museum, Brooklyn

Taxidermy in the Fine ArtsRobert Marbury of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists
Date: Tuesday, April 13th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: * Coney Island Museum, Brooklyn

A Brief History of Automate
An Illustrated Lecture and Demonstration by Mike Zohn, Obscura Antiques and Oddities
Date: Wednesday, April 14th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: * Coney Island Museum, Brooklyn

A History of Taxidermy: Art, Science and Bad Taste
An Illustrated Presentation By Dr. Pat Morris, Royal Holloway, University of London
Date: Thursday, April 15th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: * Coney Island Museum, Brooklyn

Charles Wilson Peale and the Birth of the American Museum
An Illustrated Presentation by Samuel Strong Dunlap, PhD, Descendant of Charles Wilson Peale
Date: Friday, April 16th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: * Coney Island Museum, Brooklyn

Museums, Monsters and the Moral Imagination
An Illustrated lecture with Professor Stephen Asma, author of Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads and On Monsters.
Date: Thursday, April 22
Time: 8:00 PM
LOCATION: * Observatory, Brooklyn

Experimenting with Death: An Introduction to Terror Management Theory
An Illustrated Lecture by Michael Johns, Former Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Wyoming
Time: 8:00 PM
Date: Friday, May 7
LOCATION: * Observatory, Brooklyn

You can find out more by clicking here. You can get directions to Observatory by clicking here. You can find out more about the "Congress for Curious People" by clicking here. You can get on our mailing list by clicking here can join Observatory on Facebook by clicking here.

Image credits: Images 1-3: Tim Knox and Todd Longstaffe-Gowan Collection, London. Image 4: Archives 2009-015, Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. Image 5: Natural History Museum Store-room; Image 6: Muséum d'Hi
stoire Naturelle de Rouen, Store-room; Image 7: "Femme à barbe," Musée Orfila. Courtesy of Paris Descartes University.

Screenprinted in Blood

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Watain Lawless Darkness poster

You read that correctly. The Swedish metal band Watain hired designer Metastazis in collaboration with Zbigniew M. Bielak to design the above poster.  Metastazis, a firm “dedicated to the most scandalous yet refined forms of expression”, did so using human blood. According to the design firm’s founder, Volnair, a total of 111 posters were made and were sold at a London show on June 5 for 20 euros each.

That is a lot of blood.

Watain blood draw

Watain blood screen print

Watain blood screen print

Watain blood screen print

You can see more pictures of the process on the Metastazis blog.

[via Print]

This Friday at Observatory! "Diableries, Medical Oddities and Ghosts in Amazing Victorian 3D!" Lecture and Artifact Display by Ronni Thomas

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This Friday night, Morbid Anatomy presents at Observatory a night of arcane media and Victorian projection! Join collector and film-maker Ronni Thomas as he displays his collection of Diableries slides--masterfully designed 3d stereo 'tissues' created in france in the 19th Century depicting the daily life of Satan and his cohorts; see above--coupled with an illustrated lecture about the history of these fantastic artifacts and their kin. Come early and stay late to enjoy the phonograph stylings of DJ Davin Kuntze. Guests are also invited to bring their own arcane media and viewers!

Full details follow; Hope very very much to see you there!

Diableries, Medical Oddities and Ghosts in Amazing Victorian 3D!
An illustrated lecture and artifact display by filmmaker and collector Ronni Thomas
Date: Friday, July 30th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Tonight, join Observatory for a night of unique 3D stereo-views from the 1800s featuring HAUNTING double exposure ghost images, DISTURBING medical anomalies and the ever ELUSIVE french Diableries (or devil tissues)!

3D is very much in the news these days, and while hollywood has finally come close to perfecting this technology for the silver screen, people are largely unaware that the Victorians were also aficionados of 3D technologies, and that this interest often took a turn towards the macabre. Tonight, filmmaker and collector Ronni Thomas will lecture on the history of macabre 3D spectacles of the Victorian age, especially the infamous Diableries series–masterfully designed 3D stereo ’tissues’ created in france in the 19th century, backlit and featuring ornate scenes depicting the daily life of Satan in Hell (see image to left for example). Tongue in cheek and often controversial, these macabre spectacles give us a very interesting look at the 19th century’s lighthearted obsession with death and the macabre, serving as a wonderful demonstration of the Victorian fascination with themes such as the afterlife, heaven, hell and death.

In addition to the lecture, Thomas will display original Diablaries and other artifacts from his own collection. Guests are encouraged to bring their own pieces and, better yet, a stereo-viewer.

You can find out more about this presentation here. You can find out more about the Diablaries by clicking here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Image: Found on the wonderful pre-cinema resource Early Visual Media; Caption: An Image from the Diableries series--masterfully designed 3d stereo 'tissues' created in france in the 19th Century.

Anatomical Rock

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Anatomy guitar by Royce Volkmann

Anatomy guitar by Royce Volkmann

Royce Volkmann anatomy guitar

I don’t believe we’ve ever featured an anatomically themed guitar here on Street Anatomy before.  A viewer recently submitted these photos of a guitar he decoupaged with historical anatomical images from the awesome repository of images that is Historical Anatomies.  ‘Decoupaged’ is such a great word.

Historical Anatomies, put together by the NIH, has hundreds of historical anatomical images that are great for making collages or adding that accent of anatomy in any project.  Dream Anatomy is another site with a wonderful collection that actually takes you through a timeline of the history of anatomical illustration.  In fact, the header image on this blog contains an illustration from the collection.

[Submitted by Royce]

Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory Next Week (August 5 & 6): Lord Whimsy’s Curious Flora and Amy Herzog’s Pornographic Arcades!

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This Thursday and Friday at Observatory! Lord Whimsy on the curious flora of the bogs of Southern New Jersey--with live specimens and a book signing!--and Amy Herzog on the pornographic peepshows of Times Square as illuminated by Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project. Hope to see you at one of both of these great events!

Full details follow:


Nature as Miniaturist: An Illustrated Survey of the Bogs of Southern New Jersey An Illustrated lecture and specimen demonstration with author, artist, and Gentleman Naturalist Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy
Date: Thursday, August 5th
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Copies of Whimsy's book The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One will be available for sale and signing

Tonight, author, artist and Gentleman Naturalist Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy will be giving an illustrated lecture on the botanical oddities found in the ancient, Ice Age bogs of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. These tiny, alien worlds are home to rare orchids, carnivorous plants, and bizarre species of plants and animals–some of which are found nowhere else on Earth. Whimsy, a lifelong resident of the Pine Barrens, will also give a demonstration of how to build and maintain your own container garden for these strange, wonderful plants. Live specimens of these plants will be on display, and care sheets for carnivorous plants like Venus Flytrap will also be made available. Whimsy’s book The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One will also be available for sale and signing.

Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy (aka V. Allen Crawford III) is an artist, designer, author, failed dandy, bushwhacking aesthete, and middle-aged dilettante. Whimsy is the author of The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume One (Bloomsbury), which has been optioned for film by Johnny Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil. He and his wife are proprietors of Plankton Art Co., an illustration and design studio. Their most notable project to date is the collection of 400 species identification illustrations that are on permanent display at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Ocean Life.


Photo courtesy Bruce Hamilton

The Pornographic Arcades Project: Adaptation, Automation, and the Evolution of Times Square (1965-1975) An Illustrated lecture with Amy Herzog, professor of media studies and film studies program coordinator at Queens College, CUNY
Date: Friday, August 6
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

Walter Benjamin, in his fragmentary Das Passagen-Werk, illuminated the resonances between urban architectural structures and the phenomena that define a cultural moment. “The Pornographic Arcades Project” is a work-in-progress, seeking to build on Benjamin’s insight to ask what a study of pornographic peep show arcades might reveal about the cultural imaginary of the late twentieth century.

Motion picture “peeping” machines have existed since the birth of cinema, and were often stocked with salacious titles. Public arcades devoted to pornographic peep booths only began to appear in the late 1960s, however, although once established, they proliferated wildly, becoming ubiquitous features in urban landscapes. Outfitted with recycled technologies, peep arcades were distinctly local enterprises that creatively exploited regional zoning and censorship laws. They became sites for diverse social traffic, and emerged as particularly significant venues for gay men, hustlers, prostitutes, and other marginalized groups. The film loops themselves often engage in a strange inversion of public and private, as “intimate interiors” are offered up to viewers, at the same time that the spectators are called out by the interface of the machines, and by the physical structures of the arcades.

Peep arcades set in motion a complex dynamic, one that sheds light on wider contemporary preoccupations: surveillance videography and social control; commodification, fetishization, and sexual politics; debates regarding vice and access to the public sphere. Less obvious are they ways in which the arcades subvert far older fascinations, such as technologies of anatomical display and the aesthetics of tableaux vivants.

Amy Herzog is associate professor of media studies and coordinator of the film studies program at Queens College, CUNY. She is the author of Dreams of Difference, Songs of the Same: The Musical Moment in Film (Minnesota, 2010). She recently curated an exhibition at The James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center on the dialogue between pornographic peep loops and contemporary art practices; you can find out more about that exhibition, entitled “Peeps”, by clicking here.

You can find out more about thes presentation here and here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Anatomic Fashion Friday: Skeleton Suit

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Well, if this doesn’t get the judges attention on competition day, lets hope your performance does! These bathing suits are a crafty x-ray sneak peek into a swimmers physique, and with the blue watery background, I bet they blend really nicely in the water. Simply awesome, too bad there is no bikini version, ha. I have no clue where this image is from or who the team members are, or what team, but if anyone knows, please fill us in!

[via ffffound]

Menstruation Machine – Takashi’s Take

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Artist Hiromi Ozaki created this “Menstruation Machine [as] a device which simulates the pain and bleeding of an average 5 day menstruation process of a human (well…I have done my best to simulate my own, at least).”

The below video depicts a night out for a young man, Takashi, who decides he wants to see what it is like to be a girl. He not only dresses the part, but tries out the Menstruation Machine for a more well-rounded experience.

There is more to Ozaki’s device than allowing men or anyone who does net get periods to experience it. She is also concerned with looking at how menstruation and reproduction is viewed within human societies. Ozaki asks, “What does Menstruation mean, biologically, culturally and historically, to humans? Who might choose to have it, and how might they have it?”

I for one do love the idea of men having to wear the Menstruation Machine. They need to know our pain.

[via Sputniko, tdw]

Anatomy: Type

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Tito Jones Anatomy: Type

Tito Jones Anatomy: Type

Tito Jones Anatomy: Type

Tito Jones Anatomy: Type

This campaign was used to promote Anatomy: Type, an event that was held at the Type Directors Club in New York City — an international organization for people devoted to excellence in typography, both in print and on screen. The works use synonyms to play on the names of letter elements.

Tito Jones is a talented designer and more of his work can be seen here!

The Natural History Cabinet of Alfred Russel Wallace, 19th Century

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Images © Robert Heggestad 2009 – All Rights Reserved

I just stumbled upon a wonderful collection of photographs documenting specimens from the natural history cabinet of naturalist explorer Alfred Russel Wallace; this incredible cabinet was famously discovered in 1979 at an Arlington Virgina-based antique store by Robert Heggestad. Heggestad--who took the photos you see above and who still owns the cabinet--purchased this amazing cabinet, seen by some to be a national treasure, for a mere $600.

Alfred Russel Wallace, The cabinet's creator, is famous for having come up with a theory of natural selection concurrently with his associate Charles Darwin; a letter he wrote to Darwin detailing his theory--which came to him in a fever dream, as explored compellingly by artist Mark Dion in the piece "The Delirium of Alfred Russel Wallace"-- famously led Darwin to overcome his qualms and publish his own work. The following excerpted text and images above are all from the blog Quigley's Cabinet:

“As you can imagine,” Heggestad writes, “after spending the past three years learning about his multifaceted life, I have become a great Wallace fan.” He notes that the cabinet is no longer on exhibit, but is still at the American Museum of Natural History cared for by Dr. David Grimaldi, Curator of Diptera, Fossil Insects & Lepidoptera, who will publish a paper on the historical and scientific significance of the collection. “I think this is a fabulous thing…a national treasure, actually,” says Dr. Grimaldi.

The collection contains some 1679 specimens in 26 glass-topped drawers that were originally hermetically sealed. “Of dragon-flies, I have many pretty species…” Wallace wrote in a letter from Singapore in 1854, and indeed the cabinet contains 36 dragon and caddis flies (1st image). The drawers in which the 398 butterflies and 294 moths were pinned had been built with a compartment along the front filled with camphor crystals, used to prevent damage to insect collections by other small insects. Wallace’s butterfly specimens include a “cracker” butterfly (Papilio amphinome, 2nd image), native to South America and named for the unusual sound the males produce as part of their territorial displays; a brush-footed butterfly collected in Brazil and commonly known as an “88” because of the pattern on its wings. The moths include a blue underwing, named for the bright hindwings hidden beneath dull forewings, and 2 species of sphinx moth, known for their quick and sustained flying ability, for which they are often mistaken for hummingbirds. Of the sphinx moth, Wallace wrote, “this moth, shortly after its immergence from the cocoon, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationary in the air, with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled and inserted into the minute orifices of flowers; and no one, I believe, has ever seen this moth learning to perform its difficult task which requires such unerring aim.”

Among the 396 shells (3rd image) and stones and 86 pods and botanical specimens (4th image) is the fruit of a large leguminous tree of Brazil, the pulpy center of which is pulpy and edible. But perhaps the most intriguing specimen is the skin of an African sun bird (5th image), an Old World bird also reminiscent of hummingbirds because of the iridescent coloration of the males.

The collection also includes a British butterfly that is now extinct, fireflies and bedbugs captured by Wallace when he was 11 years old, and glasswing butterflies. The cabinet includes 2 specimens of the death’s-head moth featured in “The Silence of the Lambs.” Wallace gathered insects with “protective resemblances” - beetles that look like dewdrops, and moths that look like leaves, sticks, and bird droppings – and insects that mimic each other. He had many examples of protective coloration. He collected multiples of a single species to show individual variation. Wallace believed “that a superior intelligence, acting nevertheless through natural and universal laws, has guided the development of man in a definite direction and for a special purpose” - a more theistic view than Darwin, and the equivalent of today’s theory of “intelligent design.”

You can read this story in its entirety and see the full image collection (from which the above were excerpted) by clicking here. You can read more about the discovery of the cabinet by Mr. Heggestad by clicking here. To find out more about Alfred Russel Wallace, click here. To find out more about Mark Dion's artpiece, click here.

Anatomy of a Thug

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Anatomy of a thug

So this explains the oversized t-shirts and below the border saggy jeans! Every time I see a guy dressed like this (which is A LOT living in Chicago), I can’t help but smile as I stare at their little legs!  With each bow-legged step I cheer in my head, LITTLE LEGS! LITTLE LEGS! GO LITTLE LEGS!  Until they turn around…

[spotted by Peter]

"Lewd and Scandalous Books," Monash University Library, Melbourne, Through September 30th

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Above are some wonderful anatomical images from the exhibition "Lewd and Scandalous Books," on view at Monash University library in Melbourne, Australia until September 30th. I especially love the top image, which brings to mind the Anatomical Venus trope.

You can visit the virtual exhibition--from which these images are drawn--by clicking here.

Images top to bottom:

  1. Beach, W. (Wooster), 1794-1868. An improved system of midwifery, adapted to the reformed practice of medicine: illustrated by numerous plates … / / by W. Beach (Cincinnati: Moore, Wilstach, Keys & Co., 1859).
  2. Mauriceau, François, 1637–1709. Traité des maladies des femmes grosses … / Par François Mauriceau. 6th ed. (Paris: Par la Compagnie des Libraires, 1721–28)
  3. Crooke, Helkiah, 1576–1635. Mikrokosmographia: A description of the body of man … / By Helkiah Crooke … 2nd ed. (London: Printed for Thomas and Richard Cotes, and are to be sold by Michael Sparke, 1631).

Found via Book Tryst.

Tonight! Morbid Anatomy in Conversation with Stephen Asma, Author of "On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears," Bryant Park Reading Room

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Tonight at Bryant Park Reading Room! Stephen Asma and I talk monsters, within and without, as investigated in his recent book On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. Full details follow; Hope to see you there!!

Word for Word Université at Bryant Park
In cooperation with Oxford University Press

Presents

Stephen Asma, author of On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears

In conversation with

Joanna Ebenstein, Morbid Anatomy Blog and Library

“Real or imagined, literal or metaphorical, monsters have exerted a dread fascination on the human mind for many centuries. Using philosophical treatises, theological tracts, newspapers, films, and novels, author Stephen T. Asma unpacks traditional monster stories for the clues they offer about the inner logic of our fears and fascinations throughout the ages.” – Amazon.com review

Please join us for a fascinating discussion of the monsters in our lives and our need to classify them. Stephen Asma is the distinguished scholar and Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago. Joanna Ebenstein is the creator and writer of the Morbid Anatomy blog and the related Brooklyn-based Morbid Anatomy Library.

Place: Bryant Park Reading Room*
Date: July 21, 2010
Time: 7pm

This program is free to the public. For more details, visit http://www.bryantpark.org.

*The Bryant Park Reading Room is located on the 42nd Street side of Bryant Park, between 5th Avenue and Sixth Avenue. Look for the big burgundy/white umbrellas.

Directions to Bryant Park: Subways B, D, F, V to 6th Ave. @ 42nd St. 7 line to 5th Ave.@ 42nd St.; Bus M1, M2, M3, M4, Q32, to 5th Ave.@ 42nd St.; M5, M6, M7 to 6th Ave.@ 42nd St.

More information about the event and the venue can be found here. You can find more about Stephen Asma's books here and here and more about he and his work here.

Image: As used in Asma's book, and as seen in the Anatomical Theatre exhibition: Museum of Anatomical Waxes “Luigi Cattezneo” (Museo Delle Cere Anatomiche “Luigi Cattaneo”): Bologna, Italy "Iniope–conjoined twins" Wax anatomical model; Cesare Bettini, Early 19th Century

Galileo’s Finger, Science Museums, and the New York Times

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Now a particularly enduring Catholic practice is on prominent display in, of all places, Florence’s history of science museum, recently renovated and renamed to honor Galileo: Modern-day supporters of the famous heretic are exhibiting newly recovered bits of his body — three fingers and a gnarly molar sliced from his corpse nearly a century after he died — as if they were the relics of an actual saint.

“He’s a secular saint, and relics are an important symbol of his fight for freedom of thought,” said Paolo Galluzzi, the director of the Galileo Museum, which put the tooth, thumb and index finger on view last month, uniting them with another of the scientist’s digits already in its collection.

“He’s a hero and martyr to science,” he added.

The above image--of Galileo Galileo's preserved finger in its reliquary as now on display in Florence’s history of science museum--and text are drawn from an article that ran in today New York Times. You can read the article--which traces the history of Galileo as well as his preserved fingers and other assorted remains--in its entirety by clicking here.

Image Caption: "Visitors looked at one of Galileo’s fingers, on display at the Galileo Museum in Florence." Photo by Kathryn Cook for The New York Times                            

Tonight at Observatory! "Morbid Ink: Field Notes on the Human Memorial Tattoo" with Dr. John Troyer

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Morbid Anatomy presents at Observatory Tonight (!!!), July 20th. Hope to see you there!

Morbid Ink: Field Notes on the Human Memorial Tattoo
An Illustrated lecture with Dr. John Troyer, Deputy Director, Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath
Date: Tuesday July 20th
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

In 1891, Samuel F. O’Reilly of New York, NY patented the first “…electromotor tattooing-machine,” a modern and innovative device that permanently inserted ink into the human skin. O’Reilly’s invention revolutionized tattooing and forever altered the underlying concept behind a human tattoo, i.e., the writing of history on the body. Tattooing of the body most certainly predates the O’Reilly machine (by several centuries) but one kind of human experience remains constant in this history: the memorial tattoo.

Memorial tattooing is, as Marita Sturken discusses the memorialization of the dead, a technology of memory. Yet the tattoo is more than just a representation of the dead. It is a historiographical practice in which the living person seeks to make death intelligible by permanently altering his or her own body. In this way, memorial tattooing not only establishes a new language of intelligibility between the living and the dead, it produces a historical text carried on the historian’s body. A memorial tattoo is an image but it is also (and most importantly) a narrative.

Human tattoos have been described over the centuries as speaking scars and/or the true writing of savages; cut from the body and then collected by Victorian era gentlemen. These intricately inked pieces of skin have been pressed between glass and then hidden away in museum collections, waiting to be re-discovered by the morbidly curious. The history of tattooing is the story of Homo sapiens’ self-invention and unavoidable ends.

Tattoo artists have a popular saying within their profession: Love lasts forever but a tattoo lasts six months longer.

And so too, I will add, does death

Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in spring 2011.

You can find out more about this presentation here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.