Call for Papers: Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment, Edinburgh, June 15-16

I just got word of a call for papers for an excellent sounding upcoming conference. Details below:

The University of Edinburgh
Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment
June 15-16, 2012

Confirmed Plenary Speakers:

Prof. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
George Washington University

Dr. Peter Hutchings
Northumbria University

From freak exhibitions and fairs, medical examinations and discoveries to various portrayals in arts and literature, images of deformity (or monstrosity, used separately or interchangeably depending on context) have captivated us for centuries. The result is a significant body of critical and artistic works where these bodies are dissected, politicized, exhibited, objectified or even beatified. Nonetheless, there remains a gap, an unexplored, unspoken or neglected aspect of this complex field of study which needs further consideration. This two-day interdisciplinary conference aims to bring the senses and the sensuous back to the monstrous or deformed body from the early modern period through to the mid-twentieth century, and seeks to explore its implications in diverse academic fields.

We hope to bring together scholars and students from a wide range of disciplines to engage in a constructive dialogue, network, and exchange ideas and experiences, connecting a community of researchers who share a fascination with deformity, monstrosity, and freakery.

Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Spectacle/fetishisation of monstrosity and deformity; monstrous sexuality/eroticisation
• The monster as a catalyst of progression/ historical perspectives
• Monstrous symbolism, prodigality, or beatification
• The racialised body; exoticising difference
• Monstrosity in medical literature; disability narratives
• Monstrous becoming; the ‘sensed’ body
• Deformed aesthetics; monstrosity in the visual arts
• (De) gendering the deformed body; humanisation vs objectification

We welcome proposals for 20-minute presentations from established scholars, postdoctoral researchers and postgraduate students from various teratological backgrounds, e.g. in literature, history, media and art studies, philosophy, religious studies, history of science,medical humanities, and critical and cultural theory. Proposals should be no more than 300 words, in .doc format, and should include a brief 50-word biography.

Please submit your abstracts no later than 31 January 2012 to sdefconference@ed.ac.uk

Dr. Karin Sellberg (The University of Edinburgh)
Ally Crockford (The University of Edinburgh)
Maja Milatovic (The University of Edinburgh)

For more info, visit the conference blog by clicking here.

Image: From the conference blog, where they cite the images as courtesy of the BMJ Publishing Group, BMJ 1889, June 8; 1(1484): 1288–1289.

"Human Monstrosities" Set on Kintzertorium Flickr Set

I just stumbled upon a really fantastic Flickr set, from which the above images are drawn; click here to view the entire collection and find out more about these images. Via the Kagami Blog.

“No Monster Exists that Cannot be Made Pleasing Through Art”, 1775

Jacques Louis Moreau (1771-1826). Description des principales monstruosités dans l’homme et dans les animaux précédée d’un discours sur la physiologie et la classification des monstres … avec figures coloriées par N.F. Regnault … Paris: Fournier, 1808.

This book was originally published in 1775 by the artists Nicolas-François and Geneviève Regnault under the title Les Ecarts de la nature ou recueil des principales monstruosités (The Deviations of Nature or a Collection of the Main Monstrosities). For the first time in print, the artists, well aware of the susceptibilities of their readers, exploited the aesthetic beauty of monsters. The prospectus quoted the French poet Boileau: “no monster exists that cannot be made pleasing through art”.

Above is a provocative description of the book Les Ecarts de la nature ou recueil des principales monstruosités from the New York Academy of Medicine's wonderful online exhibition "A Telling of Wonders: Teratology in Western Medicine through 1800", as well as images from the same. Can this really be true, I wonder? Can this truly be the first time print artists "exploited the aesthetic beauty of monsters?" I find it a difficult assertion to support. Regardless, I like the pairing--especially the use of the poet's words--found on a recent post on the wonderful A Journey Round my Skull.

See the original post here. You can visit the "Telling of Wonders: Teratology in Western Medicine" online exhibition here. And you can see larger versions of the images by clicking on them.

Human Oddities, Care of "E-L-I-S-E"

The E-L-I-S-E blog continues to unearth fantastic things; visit the blog's "Human Oddities" post (and see the full collection from which this sampling is drawn) by clicking here.

"Concept Horror" Art Opening, London, Saturday June 7

I received an email from artist Kristen Alvanson about the "Concept Horror" opening party in London this Saturday. The exhibition accompanies the release of Collapse Magazine's horror-themed issue IV. The magazine and the show both feature contributions by Jake and Dinos Chapman, Keith Tilford, and Kristen Alvanson, among others.

Kristen sent me a brief description of her contribution, a photo series called Arbor Deformia, (top two images) in which she uses the teratological taxonomic writings of surgeon-to-the-kings and medical thinker Ambrose Paré, well known for his book Des Monstres et Prodiges of 1573 (bottom two images), as a point of departure. She writes:

...[my] visual essay Arbor Deformia discusses how anatomical or teratological taxonomies present us with a deformation produced in thought in its ongoing struggle to encompass the horror of nature's indifference to its classificatory desires. [The] photographs capture unfortunate creatures in already preserved form, as 'doubly-dead'; all-too familiar, but so repugnant as to oblige us to a discursive dissociation. [I] argue that these deformities and teratological entities therefore seem to breed conceptual monstrosities, out-of-control taxonomical systems as deranged as the beings they are designed to corral into rational discourse. Arbor Deformia, integrating the biological and taxonomical levels of this twofold teratologism, gives an inventive graphical solution to the twisted logics of Ambroise Paré's sixteenth-century classifications which combine anatomy with teratology.

If anyone is in London this Saturday, why not check it out? More infomation about the opening here. More information about the magazine and contributers here.