The Body on Display

Undergraduate / Graduate

In this course we will examine the historical and ethical landscape of exhibiting humans in various forms to a viewing public. Our focus is on the display of corpses and human remains in museums and books. We discuss medical, legal, cultural, and journalistic views toward bodies as they transition from a living being to a recognizable corpse, to bones, and eventually to dust. We examine the transformations that have occurred in sourcing, displaying, and preserving images of dead bodies and body parts across time from before Vesalius to von Hagens and the current day. We explore how the audience targeted for human body displays has changed across history and continues to change today. We look at gross anatomy dissection of human corpses as a rite-of-passage in medical education. Time permitting, we will examine the display of living humans in telethons and in the baby displays of Martin Couney. Source material will come primarily from memoirs, academic articles, and long-form journalism. Ultimately, our interrogation of bodies on display will reveal implicit societal attitudes toward life, death, and personhood.