Reckoning with Queer Anatomies: Aesthetics, Ethics & Perverse Desire in the Anatomical Image; Or, The Epistemology of the Anatomical Closet

Queerseminariet vid Stockholms universitet / The Seminars in Queer Studies at Stockholm University — Autumn 2026, Tema: Queert och medicinskt / Queer and medicine. Speaker: Mike Sappol. Language: English. Format: Zoom. Content note: This talk shows historical drawings and printed images of dissected and whole human bodies and body-parts, including genitalia and rectums. Sexual body-parts and same-sex desire were unmentionables in 18th- and 19th-century Europe, debarred from polite conversation and printed discourse. Yet one scientific discipline – anatomy – had license to represent the intimate details of the human body – rectum and genitalia included. Anatomical figures gave off heat, provided both pleasure and legitimation: anatomy was a foundational subject in art and medical pedagogy, and in the encyclopedic curriculum of Enlightenment discourse. Philosophical, medical and connoisseurial competence, all depended on a secure knowledge of anatomy. Yet our historical actors didn't declare their erotic interests. If, as Eve Sedgwick argued, "closeted-ness…is a performance initiated…by the speech act of a silence," then we need to peer into their textual and representational spaces, and decode their images and actions. Focusing on celebrated atlases and works that danced on the borderline of respectability, Mike Sappol uses queer theory, close reading, and the comparative method to recover the lost world of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment anatomy and desire. Michael Sappol is a historian of the visual culture of medicine and science, and Visiting Researcher in the History of Science & Ideas at Uppsala University. Registration: email elin.bengtsson@gender.su.se no later than the day before the seminar. More info: https://www.su.se/institutionen-for-etnologi-religionshistoria-och-genusvetenskap/forskning/konferenser-och-seminarier/queerseminariet-1.609109