Hunterian Museum reopens in London

Not to be confused with the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University (although that's also worth a look if you are attending the conference in person!), London's Hunteraian re-opens tomorrow (16th May) and is chock-full of exhibits that are relevant to our theme of Bodies on Display.

Follow the link below to read The Guardian's Oliver Wainwright write about John Hunter, his collection and the museum refurbishment.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/may/12/tooth-transplants-and-pickled-penises-inside-the-revamped-hunterian

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Abstract: [Dis]Playing Changing Bodies: Metamorphic Greco-Roman Myths as ‘Display’ of Form

[Dis]Playing Changing Bodies: Metamorphic Greco-Roman Myths as ‘Display’ of Form Dr Tanika Koosmen University of Newcastle, Australia. tanika.koosmen@newcastle.edu.au The historical narrative of displayed bodies in a variety of contexts – freak shows, museum display of human remains, even as far as drag shows – finds its philosophical origins in the traditions of Greco-Roman mythological metamorphosis. To display a body is to be aware of its physicality, its metaphorical makeup, and its human/nonhuman subjectivity. In the Greek and Latin myths of transformation, exemplified by 1 st century CE Latin poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses , the display of the human and nonhuman form pre-empts the approach validated in later display traditions. When displaying a body that traverses the line between human and nonhuman, object and subject, these categorical violations must be considered: display of the metamorphosised form in literature is the early origins of these discussions, such as the ...

Call for Papers

An increasing amount of attention has been paid to impairment and disability in classical antiquity in recent years. However, one aspect of the subject that has not received significant attention, despite recent developments in the study of ancient paradoxography (e.g., Kazantzidis 2019; Geus 2018) and ancient collections, collectors, and collecting (e.g., Carpino et al. 2018; Higbie 2017; Thompson 2016; Gahtan and Pegazzano 2015; Rutledge 2012), is the public display of impaired and disabled people. The same applies to extraordinary (in all senses of the word) bodies. Whether those bodies were human, animal, or cryptid, when scholars have acknowledged this phenomenon, the focus has been placed squarely on those individuals responsible for the displaying. For example, the imperial biographer Suetonius uses this as an indicator of virtue or vice in his subjects: Augustus is a good emperor for avoiding bodily display while Tiberius and Domitian are bad emperors for indulging in the pr...

Abstract: “The sort of man you all see me to be”: Visible Disability and Citizenship in Classical Athens

Jasmine Sahu-Hough PhD candidate, Yale University “The sort of man you all see me to be”: Visible Disability and Citizenship in Classical Athens The dokimasia held annually to assess the eligibility of Athenian citizens for the so-called ‘disability pension’ would seem, in many ways, to be a classic example of the public display of disabled bodies. In requiring the recipients of the pension to submit to examination, the ancient Athenian democracy appears to prefigure modern states, which often subject those claiming disability benefits to intrusive surveillance – a process which, as Nancy Hirschmann and Beth Linker (2014) have argued, demotes disabled citizens to the status of “dependents”. Matthew Dillion (2017), however, has demonstrated that the dokimasia was simply a standard feature of democratic fiscal oversight; not only the pension beneficiaries (the adunatoi), but ...

Bodies on Display: Human, Animal and Cryptid Bodies from Antiquity to the Present

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