Almost every medical faculty possesses anatomical and/or pathological collections: human and animal preparations, wax- and other models, as well as drawings, photographs, documents and archives relating to them. In many institutions these collections are well-preserved, but in others they are poorly maintained and rendered inaccessible to medical and other audiences. This volume explores the changing status of anatomical collections from the early modern period to date. It is argued that anatomical and pathological collections are medically relevant not only for future generations of medical faculty and future research, but they are also important in the history of medicine, the history of the institutions to which they belong, and to the wider understanding of the cultural history of the body. Moreover, anatomical collections are crucial to new scholarly inter-disciplinary studies that investigate the interaction between arts and sciences, especially medicine, and offer a venue for the study of interactions between anatomists, scientists, anatomical artists and other groups, as well as the display and presentation of natural history and medical cabinets. In considering the fate of anatomical collections - and the importance of the keeper's decisions with respect to collections - this volume will make an important methodological contribution to the study of collections and to discussions on how to preserve universities' academic heritage.

A strong preoccupation with the human body - often manifested in startling ways - is a characteristic shared by early modern Europeans and their present-day counterparts. Whilst modern manifestations of this interest include body piercing, tattoos, plastic surgery and eating disorders, early modern preoccupations encompassed such diverse phenomena as monstrous births and physical deformity, body snatching, public dissection, flagellation, judicial torture and public punishment. This volume explores such extreme manifestations of early modern bodily obsessions and fascinations, and their wider cultural significance. Agreeing that an interest in physical boundaries, extreme physical manifestations and situations developed and grew stronger during the early modern period, the essays in this volume investigate whether this interest can be traced in a wider range of cultural phenomena, and should therefore be given a prominent place in any future characterization of the early modern period. Taken as a whole, the volume can be read as an attempt to create a new context in which to explore the cultural history of the human body, as well as the metaphors of research and investigation themselves.

Are the humanities still relevant in the twenty-first century? In the context of pervasive economic liberalism and shrinking budgets, the importance of humanities research for society is increasingly put into question. This volume claims that the humanities do indeed matter by offering empirically grounded critical reflections on contemporary cultural practices, thereby opening up new ways of understanding social life and new directions in humanities scholarship. The contributors argue that the humanities can regain their relevance for society, pose new questions and provide fresh answers, while maintaining their core values: critical reflection, historical consciousness and analytical distance.

Explores what we actually see, touch, and experience when looking at art. Typically, art history is an enterprise of recovery--of searching out the provenance, the original intentions, the physical setting, and historical conditions behind a work of art. The essays in Compelling Visuality address some of the "other" questions that are less frequently asked--and, in doing so, show how much is to be learned and gained by going beyond the traditional approaches of art history. In particular, the contributors take up the commonly unexplored question of what is actually present in a work of art--what we see, touch, and experience when confronted with Renaissance or Baroque works that have survived the vicissitudes of time. International and interdisciplinary, this volume conducts readers into an ongoing discussion of the value and significance of personal response to works of art.