Anatomy as Spectacle

Anatomy as Spectacle PDF Author: Elizabeth Stephens
Publisher: Representations: Health, Disability, Culture and Society
ISBN: 9781846318740
Category : Anatomical museums
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
From the late eighteenth century to the present day, public exhibitions featuring displays of human anatomy have proven popular with a wide range of audiences, successfully marketed as educational facilities for medical professionals as well as improving entertainments for the general public. Partly a product of the public sanitation and health reform movements that began in the eighteenth century, partly a form of popular spectacle, early public anatomical exhibitions drew on two apparently distinct cultural developments: firstly, the professionalisation of medicine from the mid 1700s and the increasingly central role of practical anatomy within it; secondly, the rise of a culture of public spectacles such as world fairs, public museums, circuses and side shows, and the use of new visual technologies these spaces pioneered. Such spectacles often drew on medical discourses as a way of lending legitimacy to their displays of human bodies, while their popularity also helped make the then-contentious practice of anatomy publicly acceptable. This book examines the cultural work performed by such exhibitions and their role in (re)producing new ways of seeing and knowing the body over the modern era. While public anatomical exhibitions might seem to occupy a marginal position in the history of popular culture and that of medicine, their distinctive intermixing of the medical and the spectacular has made them an influential and intensely productive cultural space, an important site of emergence for new ideas about bodily health and care. This book traces the influential role of such exhibitions in popularising a distinctly modern idea of the body as something requiring constant work and careful self-cultivation-an idea which continues to play a central role in the contemporary fascination with practices and possibilities of self-improvement. Through a series of representative case studies-including eighteenth-century exhibitions of anatomical Venuses, nineteenth-century anatomical museums "for men only" that served as quack clinics for sexual disorders, traditional and contemporary freak shows, and the recent public display of real human remains in Body Worlds and other such exhibitions-Anatomy as Spectacle traces how these exhibitions taught their spectators to see their bodies as something requiring constant self-monitoring and management, constructing an embodied modern subject who is always responsible, productive, temperate, and focused on self-improvement.

Anatomy as Spectacle

Anatomy as Spectacle PDF Author: Elizabeth Stephens
Publisher: Representations: Health, Disability, Culture and Society
ISBN: 9781846318740
Category : Anatomical museums
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the late eighteenth century to the present day, public exhibitions featuring displays of human anatomy have proven popular with a wide range of audiences, successfully marketed as educational facilities for medical professionals as well as improving entertainments for the general public. Partly a product of the public sanitation and health reform movements that began in the eighteenth century, partly a form of popular spectacle, early public anatomical exhibitions drew on two apparently distinct cultural developments: firstly, the professionalisation of medicine from the mid 1700s and the increasingly central role of practical anatomy within it; secondly, the rise of a culture of public spectacles such as world fairs, public museums, circuses and side shows, and the use of new visual technologies these spaces pioneered. Such spectacles often drew on medical discourses as a way of lending legitimacy to their displays of human bodies, while their popularity also helped make the then-contentious practice of anatomy publicly acceptable. This book examines the cultural work performed by such exhibitions and their role in (re)producing new ways of seeing and knowing the body over the modern era. While public anatomical exhibitions might seem to occupy a marginal position in the history of popular culture and that of medicine, their distinctive intermixing of the medical and the spectacular has made them an influential and intensely productive cultural space, an important site of emergence for new ideas about bodily health and care. This book traces the influential role of such exhibitions in popularising a distinctly modern idea of the body as something requiring constant work and careful self-cultivation-an idea which continues to play a central role in the contemporary fascination with practices and possibilities of self-improvement. Through a series of representative case studies-including eighteenth-century exhibitions of anatomical Venuses, nineteenth-century anatomical museums "for men only" that served as quack clinics for sexual disorders, traditional and contemporary freak shows, and the recent public display of real human remains in Body Worlds and other such exhibitions-Anatomy as Spectacle traces how these exhibitions taught their spectators to see their bodies as something requiring constant self-monitoring and management, constructing an embodied modern subject who is always responsible, productive, temperate, and focused on self-improvement.

Staging Anatomies

Staging Anatomies PDF Author: Hillary M. Nunn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351898302
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 517

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Book Description
Hillary M. Nunn here traces the connections between the London public's interest in medical dissection and the changing cultural significance of bloodshed on the early Stuart playhouse stage. Considering the playhouses' role within the social world of early modern London, Nunn explores the influence of public dissection upon the presentation of human bodies in well-known plays such as King Lear, as well as in a wide range of often neglected early Stuart tragedies like The Second Maiden's Tragedy and Revenge for Honour. In addition to dramatic texts, the study draws heavily on anatomy treatises and popular pamphlets of the time. Incorporating views of anatomy's significance from a wide range of sources, this study shows the ways in which early Stuart dramatists called upon Londoners' increasing fascination with anatomical dissection to shape the staging of their tragedies.

Dissection on Display

Dissection on Display PDF Author: Christine Quigley
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786444298
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Since Herophilus, the "father of anatomy," performed the first public human dissection in the third century B.C.E., audiences have been spellbound by the cutting apart of cadavers. This volume traces the past and present of public dissection, from Herophilus's first cuts to the revival of anatomy as entertainment through spectacles like Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds, including the attacks on anatomy in the Middle Ages, the influence of Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius, the procurement of bodies through execution and body snatchers, and the withdrawal of dissectors behind medical school doors in the early 20th century. It reveals that the anatomical spectacle is not new, but has remained in the gray area between education and entertainment for centuries.

The Spectacle of Expertise

The Spectacle of Expertise PDF Author: Alex Preda
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231554575
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Financial experts have become ubiquitous on television, radio, and social media. They provide investment advice, interpret market movements, and explain the implications of political events, wielding a great deal of power and influence through their media presence. How do these experts acquire their authority, and what makes displays of financial expertise persuasive to their audiences? Alex Preda provides an ethnographic exploration of how financial expertise is performed and produced in the media, analyzing its features and how audiences react to it. He examines how analysts, anchors, and producers collaborate in manufacturing financial talk that circulates around the world. Preda emphasizes the significance of talk—as opposed to the written word—in finance, as the fabric of many transactions and a means of capturing capital. Analysts and media figures understand financial talk as requiring a skill set distinct from conducting research or representing facts. Preda demonstrates that analysts and media professionals deploy expertise when they engage with audiences in ways that make it difficult to contest the claims conveyed in their talk. The Spectacle of Expertise is based on close observations of TV and radio studios in Hong Kong, a global financial center and a crucial gateway to China, including interviews with audience members and financial analysts who appear as regular guests. It offers new and global perspectives on the relationship between financial expertise and the media, the making of public-expert talk, and how expertise is used to legitimize financialization.

The Morbid Anatomy Anthology

The Morbid Anatomy Anthology PDF Author: Joanna Ebenstein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780989394307
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 491

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Book Description
Presents a eclectic collection of essays on death and the intersection of anatomy and medicine, including pieces on such topics as post-mortem photography, books bound in human skin, eroticized anatomical wax models, and taxidermied humans.

The Lady Anatomist

The Lady Anatomist PDF Author: Rebecca Messbarger
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226520846
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714-74), a woman artist and scientist, surmounted meager origins and limited formal education to become one of the most acclaimed anatomical sculptors of the Enlightenment. The Lady Anatomist tells the story of her arresting life and times, in light of the intertwined histories of science, gender, and art that complicated her rise to fame in the eighteenth century. Examining the details of Morandi’s remarkable life, Rebecca Messbarger traces her intellectual trajectory from provincial artist to internationally renowned anatomical wax modeler for the University of Bologna’s famous medical school. Placing Morandi’s work within its cultural and historical context, as well as in line with the Italian tradition of anatomical studies and design, Messbarger uncovers the messages contained within Morandi’s wax inscriptions, part complex theories of the body and part poetry. Widely appealing to those with an interest in the tangled histories of art and the body, and including lavish, full-color reproductions of Morandi’s work, The Lady Anatomist is a sophisticated biography of a true visionary.

The Anatomical Venus

The Anatomical Venus PDF Author: Morbid Anatomy Museum
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 0500773262
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Beneath the original Venetian glass and rosewood case at La Specola in Florence lies Clemente Susini's Anatomical Venus (c. 1790), a perfect object whose luxuriously bizarre existence challenges belief. It - or, better, she - was conceived of as a means to teach human anatomy without need for constant dissection, which was messy, ethically fraught and subject to quick decay. This life-sized wax woman is adorned with glass eyes and human hair and can be dismembered into dozens of parts revealing, at the final remove, a beatific foetus curled in her womb. Sister models soon appeared throughout Europe, where they not only instructed the specialist students, but also delighted the general public. Deftly crafted dissectable female wax models and slashed beauties of the world's anatomy museums and fairgrounds of the 18th and 19th centuries take centre stage in this disquieting volume. Since their creation in late 18th-century Florence, these wax women have seduced, intrigued and amazed. Today, they also confound, troubling the edges of our neat categorical divides: life and death, science and art, body and soul, effigy and pedagogy, spectacle and education, kitsch and art. Incisive commentary and captivating imagery reveal the evolution of these enigmatic sculptures from wax effigy to fetish figure and the embodiment of the uncanny.

Applied Anatomy of Aerial Arts

Applied Anatomy of Aerial Arts PDF Author: Emily Scherb, D.P.T.
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1623172179
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
An illustrated guide to anatomy and biomechanics for aerialists who want to optimize their performance and train safely Specifically designed for aerialists—including those who do trapeze, silks, and other aerial arts— Applied Anatomy of Aerial Arts is an invaluable resource for those who want to optimize their performance and train safely. Using a biomechanical and movement-based approach, Emily Scherb—a physical therapist who specializes in the care, treatment, and education of circus performers—explains the anatomical rationale for progressions of learning and demonstrates simple movements to achieve the coordination, muscular control, strength, and fitness to hang with correct form, how to progress from hanging into a pull up, an inversion, and beyond with a strong center, precise muscle sequencing, and ease of movement. Aerialists will learn how bones, joints, muscles, and soft tissues allow for specific movements and gain an appreciation for concepts of proximal stability. This full-color illustrated guide lays a solid foundation for beginners and advanced students with a wealth of insights into their own performance as well as refreshers on fundamentals in warm ups and conditioning. It explains how to structure a training session, how to care for injuries, and best practices for basic self first aid.

The Body Collected in Australia

The Body Collected in Australia PDF Author: Eugenia Pacitti
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350373745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Offering insight into nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medical school dissecting rooms and anatomy museums, this book explores how collected human remains have shaped Western biomedical knowledge and attitudes towards the body. To explore the role Australia played in the narrative of Western medical development, Pacitti focuses on how and why Australian anatomists and medical students obtained human body parts. As medical knowledge circulated between Australia and Britain, the colony's physicians conformed to established specimen collecting practices and diverged from them to form a distinct medical identity. Interrogating how these literal and figurative bones of contention have left an indelible mark on the nation's medical profession, collecting institutions, and communities, Pacitti sheds new light on our understanding of Western medical networks and reveals the opportunities and challenges historic specimen collections pose in the present day. The Body Collected in Australia is a cultural history of collectors and collections that deepens our understanding of the ways the living have used the dead to comprehend the intricacies of the human body in illness and good health.

Transplant Fictions

Transplant Fictions PDF Author: Emily Russell
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030121356
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Removing an organ from one (typically dead) body and placing it in another living body challenges our most foundational ideas about boundaries between self and other, individual and social identity, life and death, health and illness. But despite these transgressions, organ transplant is a celebrated and relatively common procedure. Transplant Fictions brings together a diverse set of cultural representations to understand how we have overcome the profound ideological violations represented by organ exchange in order to reimagine the concept and practice as technological and moral victories. From the plots of horror stories and sci-fi novels to sentimental romances and feel-good media reports of stranger donation, this cultural study offers a nuanced portrait of the conceptual journey of organ exchange from strange and terrible to the “gift of life.”