As part of LGBT+ History Month, we are excited to announce we will be joined by American historian of the visual culture of medicine and science, Michael Sappol, to discuss his new book Queer Anatomies.

Sexual body-parts and same-sex desire were unrepresentable in 18th- and 19th-century print culture. Yet one science — anatomy — had license to picture intimate details of the naked human body — rectum and genitalia included. The anatomical image could be soberly technical, but also monstrous, flirtatious, theatrical, transgressive. And sensual. Anatomical illustrations gave off heat, pleasured the men who gazed upon and collected them in homosocial circles of chummy connoisseurship.

Anatomy was a foundational subject in art academies, schools of medicine, and the encyclopedic curriculum of Enlightenment discourse. Philosophical, medical and aesthetic competence all depended on a secure knowledge of anatomy and its texts — which offered unique opportunities for perverse erotic representation. And now this archive of closeted queer expression — mostly overlooked by historians of art and medicine — gets appreciative consideration in the profusely illustrated pages of Queer Anatomies.

Join this illustrated talk in person or online to explore this often-overlooked archive of closeted queer expression given appreciative consideration in Queer Anatomies. The in-person evening will include a drinks reception and chance to explore a display of some of the original source materials held in the RCP archive and heritage library. 

Recommended for 16+. Please be aware this talk will include anatomical images of naked human bodies and genitalia.

Book now

Schedule

• 6pm – in person welcome and registration at the RCP
• 6.15pm – talk in person and live streamed
• 7.15pm - Q&A in person and live streamed
• 7.30pm – in person drinks reception with show and tell display of original source materials from the RCP collections
• 8pm end

About the author

Michael Sappol is an American historian of the visual culture of medicine and science, and Visiting Researcher in the History of Science & Ideas at Uppsala University, Sweden. He has also written A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy & Embodied Social Identity in 19th-Century America (2002) and Body Modern: Fritz Kahn, Scientific Illustration & the Homuncular Subject (2017). His current projects focus on the history of photographic anatomy (“Anatomy’s photography: Objectivity, showmanship & the rein­vention of the anatomical image”) and the contested politics and cultural meanings of historical anatomical objects (“Endangered specimens, unaccountable objects: Historical medical collections & the ethical claims made upon them”).