Museums, Monsters and the Moral Imagination

Pathological Cabinet, Museum of the History of Medicine in Krakow, Poland

Pathological Cabinet, Museum of the History of Medicine in Krakow, Poland, © Joanna Ebenstein

An Illustrated lecture with Professor Stephen Asma, author of Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads and On Monsters.
Date: Thursday, April 22
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

In this illustrated lecture, professor Stephen Asma-author of the the definitive study of the natural history museum Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: the Culture and History of Natural History Museums-will draw upon his studies of science museums and monsters to reflect on their often hidden moral aspects. Museums are saying more about values than many people notice, and the same can be said about our cultural fascinations with monsters. The urge to classify, set boundaries, and draw lines between the natural and the unnatural are age-old impulses. In this lecture, Dr. Asma will try to excavate some of the moral uses and abuses of this impulse.

Stephen T. Asma is the author of Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: the Culture and History of Natural History Museums (Oxford) and more recently On Monsters: an Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears (Oxford). He is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia College Chicago and Fellow of the LAS Research Group in Mind, Science and Culture at Columbia. You can find out more about him at his website, www.stephenasma.com.

Copies of his books will be available for sale and signing at the event.

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