Calendario eventi
The LECTIO 2025 conference is dedicated to the representation of the human body, both in itself and in its relation to other animals, from antiquity to the present day. For centuries, the “fabric of the human body” was modeled on dissections of sheep, monkeys, and pigs until anatomists like Andreas Vesalius began to challenge this practice in the first half of the sixteenth century. Indeed, since antiquity, animals have served as visual and linguistic metaphors to help decipher the appearance and inner workings of the human body. Representations of the human body have continuously been shaped against the backdrop of the entire bestiary, a legacy still evident in modern medical discourse with such terms as “goose skin” and “cancer”.
The conference aims to explore aspects of the longstanding debate surrounding the visual representation of the human and animal body. Alongside visual representation, the conference also seeks to examine the use of words and metaphors in representing living human and animal bodies, as well as the interplay—or tension—between the media of language and imagery. It furthermore aims to trace the transmission of knowledge across linguistic traditions, focusing on issues of terminology and translation related to the human and animal body throughout history.
The visual and linguistic representation of the living body provides a unique lens through which to examine humans’ relationship with “the other,” across species and cultures. Gender differences are particularly relevant in this context, as the human body was historically equated with the adult male body in European medicine and art. This bias continues to pose challenges today, such as in drug testing, which often prioritizes male patients, resulting in treatments less suited to women’s bodies.
By focusing on representations of the body across history and into the present, the LECTIO 2025 Conference aims to bring together specialists from diverse disciplines, including medicine, intellectual history, history of science, linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, art history, book history, legal history, and religious studies. True to LECTIO’s interdisciplinary mission, this approach fosters cross-disciplinary dialogue, significantly enriching our understanding of visual and linguistic representations of the human and animal body from antiquity to the present day.
The conference proceedings will be published in the LECTIO Series.
Call for papers
We invite submissions on any relevant topic in the history of medical sciences and health, broadly conceived, and encourage a wide range of disciplinary approaches, time periods, and geographical contexts, including contemporary practices. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- the use of images, words, and metaphors to visualize and describe human and animal bodies in medicine, law, theology, literature, and culture across the ages;
- the techniques and materials used in visualizing and describing human and animal bodies;
- the translation of medical knowledge in text and image, from the Greek-Arabic-Latin tradition to the present, including interactions with non-European traditions such as those of China;
- the descriptions, representations and classifications of animal species, from an intercultural a global perspective.
ubmit your abstract
We invite two types of presentations:
- talks (between 30 and 40 minutes, including Q&A)
- flash presentations (10 minutes, by means of poster or video)
Please send your abstract of 250-300 words by 1 March 2025 (end of the day).
For more info.