• THE MARQUIS DE SADE: IS HE SERIOUS?
  With Caroline Warman
• 
  Marquis de Sade, now famous as a writer of horrifically cruel and exceedingly embarrassing pornography, was imprisoned for a total of 27 years under three completely different forms of government - in the last years of Louis XVI’s reign, during the Revolution, and under Napoleon. What was he imprisoned for? He never had a trial, so he never knew. Caroline Warman will introduce you to the man, his writings and his context, and explore how his work resisted and played out the violence imposed on him by the establishment.
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A MOST UNEXPECTED HISTORY OF BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS
With Paul Craddock
William John Bankes was an explorer, Egyptologist and adventurer who during the nineteenth century, travelled extensively to the Near East and Egypt, making an impressive collection of Egyptian artifacts. His massive portfolio of notes, manuscripts and drawings produced and collected during his travels along the Nile with explorations in Egypt provide the only historical record of some inscriptions and monuments.
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SPASMS: MOVING BODIES FROM BAUDELAIRE TO BECKETT
With Patrick Ffrench
Cinema conjures its magically moving bodies at the cost of a mechanical decomposition of the body into what looks like a series of instantaneous spasms. It gives birth to a species of automata. In this lecture Patrick Ffrench will explore the implications of this extraordinary violence across various 20th-century literary, cinematic and analytic symptoms.
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HARVESTING SKINS: A HISTORY OF TATTOOS
With Gemma Angel
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw an explosion in academic interest in the tattoo. Tattoos played a significant role in medico-legal research across a wide range of disciplines, notably forensic medicine, criminology, anthropology and psychiatry. Whilst many scholars collected data on tattooing in the form of drawings and occasionally through photography, tattooed skins where also harvested. These historic collections now reside in a number of museums and archives across Europe.
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THE STRANGE HISTORY OF MEDICAL MUSEUMS
With Sam Alberti
This book is concerned with the macabre work of pathologists as they dismembered corpses and preserved them: transforming bodies into material culture. The fragmented body parts followed complex paths - harvested from hospital wards, given to one of many prestigious institutions, or dispersed at auction. Human remains acquired new meanings as they were exchanged and were then reintegrated into museums as physical maps of disease. On shelves curators juxtaposed organic remains with paintings, photographs, and models, and rendered them legible with extensive catalogues that were intended to standardize the museum experience. And yet visitors refused to be policed, responding equally with wonder and disgust.
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WILLIAN BANKS: THE EXILED COLLECTOR
With Anne Sebba
William John Bankes was an explorer, Egyptologist and adventurer who during the nineteenth century, travelled extensively to the Near East and Egypt, making an impressive collection of Egyptian artifacts. His massive portfolio of notes, manuscripts and drawings produced and collected during his travels along the Nile with explorations in Egypt provide the only historical record of some inscriptions and monuments.
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THE MUMMY    
With James Putnam  
Artist, writer and curator James Putnam unwraps hair-raising facts about natural and man-made mummies! Here is a look that would appeal to anyone with a curiosity about this occasionally macabre subject - how bodies were prepared, why ancient cultures made mummies, and how bog and ice mummies were preserved by freak climatic conditions.
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CRYPTOZOOLOGY - On the Track of Unknown Animals    
with Richard Freeman
Cryptozoology refers to the search for animals which are considered to be legendary or otherwise nonexistent by the field of biology. Mongolian death worms, giant crested serpents and man-like apes ... As one of Britain's few cryptozoologists, Richard Freeman has searched for them all. In his lecture, Richard will be discussing what cryptozoology is and how it is studied, talking about his expeditions in search of hidden animals...
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