HI2L2-15 Life After Death: A History of Human Remains
Introductory description
Human remains have a unique material history given their dual nature as both people and objects. Since antiquity, the remains of famous and infamous individuals have been preserved as emblems of their corporeal existence around the world. But in the modern era, those of less prominent individuals have also been used in teaching and research, identified as exemplars of disease or sources of corruption, mounted as trophies, used to solve crimes, and transplanted to save lives. As a result, tens of thousands of human remains have passed through medical schools, museums, and laboratories, and have been kept far from their intended resting places.
This 15-CAT module particularly focuses on the medical uses of human remains, charting the instrumentalization of body parts since 1800 and the historical legacies this process has incurred. It looks at the myriad reasons bodies and body parts have been preserved and the various functions they have served—from revered ‘relics’ to medicinal ingredients, from teaching and research objects to symbols of reconciliation.
Module aims
Particularly drawing on methods in material history and medical history, this module examines the potency of human remains as subjects and objects, and the ongoing ethical issues surrounding their use and display. It examines the competing value systems that have made corpses and body parts into particularly contested objects for research, focusing on cultural taboos, beliefs about death, and the class and racial disparities that have informed the repurposing of the dead. Through activities such as a site visit to the Hunterian Museum (London), primary source analyses, secondary readings, and training in medical ethics and tracing object histories, this module will train students to comprehend the polysemic nature of human remains as both people and things.
Outline syllabus
This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.
Week 1: Preserving the Dead—Holy and Secular Relics
Week 2: Eating the Dead—Cannibalism and Corpse Medicine
Week 3: Stealing the Dead—Grave Robbing and Dissection
Week 4: Collecting the Dead—Human Remains in Museums
Week 5: Field Trip to the Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, London
Week 6: Reading Week
Week 7: Disposing the Dead—Cemeteries and Ossuaries
Week 8: Interrogating the Dead—Forensic Medicine
Week 9: Resurrecting the Dead—Transplantation and Tissue Research
Week 10: Returning the Dead—Repatriation
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module, students should be able to:
- Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the ‘afterlife’ of human remains in the modern period, their role in medical research and practices since 1800, and their contested legacy as museum specimens.
- Communicate ideas and findings in both class discussions and academic writing.
- Generate ideas through the analysis of a broad range of primary source materials, including texts and objects, related to the history of human remains.
- Act with limited supervision and direction within defined guidelines, accepting responsibility for achieving deadlines.
- Analyse and evaluate the contributions made by existing multidisciplinary scholarship in medical history, material history, museum studies, indigenous studies, and medical ethics.
Indicative reading list
Samuel J. M. M. Alberti, Morbid Curiosities: Medical Museums in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)
Warwick Anderson, The Collector of Lost Souls—Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)
Ian Burney and Neil Pemberton, Murder and the Making of English CSI (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016)
Chip Colwell, Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native America’s Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017)
Sarah Farber and Sally Wilde, The Body Divided: Human Beings and Human ‘Material’ in Modern Medical History (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011)
Cressida Fforde, C. Timothy McKeown and Honor Keeler (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Repatriation: Return Reconcile, Renew (London: Routledge, 2020)
Cressida Fforde, Collecting the Dead: Archaeology and the Reburial Issue (London: Duckworth, 2004)
David Hamilton, A History of Organ Transplantation: Ancient Legends to Modern Practice (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012)
Elizabeth T. Hurren, Dying for Victorian Medicine: English Anatomy and its Trade in the Dead Poor, c. 1834-1929 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
Tiffany Jenkins, Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections: The Crisis of Cultural Authority (New York: Routledge, 2011)
Rina Knoeff and Robert Zwijnenberg, eds. The Fate of Anatomical Collections (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015)
Thomas W. Laqueur, The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2015)
Frances Larson, Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found (New York: Norton, 2014)
Erin-Marie Legacey, Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780-1830 (Itaca: Cornell University Press, 2019)
Margaret M. Lock, Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)
Helen MacDonald, Human Remains: Dissection and its Histories (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006)
Samuel J. Redman, Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016)
Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute: The Politics of the Corpse in Pre-Victorian Britain, 2nd Ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)
Ricardo Roque, Headhunting and Colonialism: Anthropology and the Circulation of Human Skulls in the Portuguese Empire, 1870-1930 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
Michael Sappol, A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002
Angela Stienne, Mummified: The Stories Behind Egyptian Mummies in Museums (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022)
Richard Sugg, Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires: The History of Corpse Medicine from the Renaissance to the Victorians, 2nd Ed. (New York: Routledge, 2016)
Kim A. Wagner, The Skull of Alum Bheg: The Life and Death of a Rebel of 1857 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)
Katherine D. Watson, Forensic Medicine in Western Society: A History (New York: Routledge, 2010)
Research element
Students will research and write a 3000-word essay, incorporating a synthesis and analysis of primary and secondary sources.
Subject specific skills
See learning outcomes.
Transferable skills
See learning outcomes.
Study time
Type | Required |
---|---|
Lectures | 8 sessions of 1 hour (5%) |
Seminars | 8 sessions of 1 hour (5%) |
Tutorials | 2 sessions of 1 hour (1%) |
External visits | 1 session of 2 hours (1%) |
Private study | 130 hours (87%) |
Total | 150 hours |
Private study description
History modules require students to undertake extensive independent research and reading to prepare for seminars and assessments. As a rough guide, students will be expected to read and prepare to comment on three substantial texts (articles or book chapters) for each seminar taking approximately 3 hours. Each assessment requires independent research, reading around 6-10 texts and writing and presenting the outcomes of this preparation in an essay, review, presentation or other related task.
Costs
Category | Description | Funded by | Cost to student |
---|---|---|---|
Field trips, placements and study abroad |
For the field trip (which has received HoD's approval), this module will incur the cost of a day's coach hire to London, to visit the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. |
Department | $0.00 |
You do not need to pass all assessment components to pass the module.
Assessment group A
Weighting | Study time | Eligible for self-certification | |
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Assessment component |
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Research Essay | 80% | Yes (extension) | |
Students will research and write a 3000-word essay on the history of human remain(s) of their choosing, using primary and secondary sources, drawing on techniques in material and medical history. Teaching on this module will include meaningful in-class support and feedback to help students prepare for their substantive assessment. This may include, for example, class exercises on essay plans or source analysis; work-in-progress presentations; use of peer feedback. |
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Reassessment component is the same |
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Assessment component |
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Seminar contribution | 20% | No | |
On-going participation and enagement with seminar activities and discussion. Students will be asked to complete a short form to reflect on their own participation, and their comments will be taken into consideration for their mark for this component. |
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Reassessment component |
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1000 word Reflective Essay in lieu of Seminar Contribution | Yes (extension) | ||
A 1000-word reflective essay on module content in lieu of seminar participation for reassessments. |
Feedback on assessment
Written feedback will be provided on Tabula, and further verbal feedback will also be available during office hours at students' request.
Courses
This module is Optional for:
- Year 2 of UENA-VQ32 Undergraduate English and History
- Year 2 of UENA-VQ34 Undergraduate English and History (with a term in Venice)
- Year 2 of UFRA-R1VA Undergraduate French and History
- Year 2 of UGEA-R2V1 Undergraduate German and History
- Year 2 of ULNA-R4V1 Undergraduate Hispanic Studies and History
-
UHIA-V100 Undergraduate History
- Year 2 of V100 History
- Year 2 of V100 History
-
UHIA-Q302 Undergraduate History (Part-Time)
- Year 2 of Q302 History (Part Time)
- Year 2 of Y306 History (Part Time)
- Year 2 of UHIA-V102 Undergraduate History (Renaissance and Modern History Stream)
- Year 2 of UIPA-V1L8 Undergraduate History and Global Sustainable Development
- Year 2 of UITA-R3V2 Undergraduate History and Italian
- Year 2 of UHIA-V1V5 Undergraduate History and Philosophy
- Year 2 of UHIA-V1V7 Undergraduate History and Philosophy (with a term in Venice)
-
UHIA-VM11 Undergraduate History and Politics
- Year 2 of VM11 History and Politics
- Year 2 of VM11 History and Politics
- Year 2 of VM11 History and Politics
- Year 2 of UHIA-VM13 Undergraduate History and Politics (with a term in Venice)
- Year 2 of UHIA-VL13 Undergraduate History and Sociology
- Year 2 of UHIA-VL15 Undergraduate History and Sociology (with a term in Venice)
-
UVCA-LA99 Undergraduate Liberal Arts
- Year 2 of LA99 Liberal Arts
- Year 2 of LA92 Liberal Arts with Classics
- Year 2 of LA73 Liberal Arts with Design Studies
- Year 2 of LA83 Liberal Arts with Economics
- Year 2 of LA82 Liberal Arts with Education
- Year 2 of LA95 Liberal Arts with English
- Year 2 of LA81 Liberal Arts with Film and Television Studies
- Year 2 of LA80 Liberal Arts with Global Sustainable Development
- Year 2 of LA93 Liberal Arts with Global Sustainable Development
- Year 2 of LA97 Liberal Arts with History
- Year 2 of LA71 Liberal Arts with Law
- Year 2 of LA91 Liberal Arts with Life Sciences
- Year 2 of LA75 Liberal Arts with Modern Lanaguages and Cultures
- Year 2 of LA96 Liberal Arts with Philosophy
- Year 2 of LA94 Liberal Arts with Theatre and Performance Studies