The Feminist Lecture Program is excited to announce a brand new collaboration with the Vagina Museum! The same amazing online weekly feminist content you expect from us, now hosted by the worlds only bricks and mortar Vagina Museum!
CLASS DESCRIPTION
Anatomical Venuses--beautiful, life-sized wax women reclining on velvet cushions with Venetian glass eyes, strings of pearls, and golden tiaras crowning their real human hair-- were created in 18th-century Florence to teach the general public about the mysteries of the female body. They also tacitly communicated the relationship between the human body and a divinely created cosmos; between art and science, man and woman, nature and humankind. Today, The Anatomical Venus intrigues and confounds, troubling our neat categorical divides between life and death, body and soul, effigy and pedagogy, titillation and education, kitsch and art, sacred and profane.
This richly illustrated talk will explore the history--and implications--of
these fascinating and complicated wax ladies. We will situate them in the
larger context of beautiful, sleeping or dead women commonly found in the
18th and 19th century churches, fairgrounds and museums. We will also explore
ideas of the ecstatic from the sacred to profane; the uncanny, surrealism,
and the abject; gender and the study of human anatomy; sexual fetishism
including necrophilia and agalmatophilia (or the attraction to dolls or
statues); men who created effigies of the women they loved; and the
Anatomical Venus as artistic muse.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Joanna Ebenstein is a Mexico-based author, photographer, curator and designer. She is the founder and creative director of Morbid Anatomy, an organisation that has been exploring the interstices of art and medicine, death and culture, since 2007. She traces her lineage back to Judah Loew ben Bezalel, credited with creating the Golem in 16th century Prague. She is also a proud member of The Order of the Good Death.
Her books include Anatomica, Death: A Graveside Companion, The Anatomical Venus, The Morbid Anatomy Anthology, (with Colin Dickey) and Walter Potters Curious World of Taxidermy (with Dr Pat Morris). Her writing and photography have appeared in The New York Times, K48, Womens Studies Quarterly, and V Magazine.
Ebenstein has curated, consulted, designed and produced for institutions such as The National Library of Medicine, New York Academy of Medicine, The Mtter Museum, The Museum of Sex, Green-Wood Cemetery, Londons Wellcome Collection and Science Museum, Amsterdam's Vrolik Museum, and the Todd Haynes film Wonderstruck.
Her Tedx talk, Death as You've Never Seen it Before, has been viewed over 16,000 times; you can watch it here.
She has spoken for institutions including The New York Public Library, The
Brooklyn Historical Society, Whitechapel Gallery, The American Folk Art
Museum, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, The Science Museum of
London, The Mtter Museum, University College London, the London Natural
History Museum.
Instagram: @joanna.ebenstein
Website: https://www.joannaebenstein.com/
UPCOMING SESSIONS WITH THE FEMINIST LECTURE PROGRAM
Monday 4th March
Kamin Mohammadi
Irans Ancient Feminist History
Monday 11th March
Ruth Charnock and Karen Schaller
Witching the Institution: Academia and Feminist Witchcraft
Monday 18th March
Lucy Cade
Female Creatives and Spirit Photography in the 19th Century
Monday 25th March
Dr. Sheree Mack
The Women of the Black British Art Movement
Monday 1st April
Nina-Sophia Miralles
Vogue Magazine: Invention, Erasure, Perversity & Power
Monday 8th April
Camilla Baier, Lauren Clarke and Rachel Pronger
The Animation of Mary Blair: A Feminists Guide to Disney
Monday 15th April
Lauren Peters
Fashion Before Plus-Size: Bodies, Bias, and the Birth of an Industry
Monday 22nd April
Ama Josephine Budge Johnstone
Intimate Ecologies: a Black feminist erotics for interspecies un/worlding
Monday 29th April
Joanna Ebenstein
The Anatomical Venus
Monday 6th May
Amina Nugumanova and Elmira Ismukhamedova
Women in Central Asian art: Preservation of Collective Heritage and Decolonisation
Stay tuned in to be the first to hear about our Summer term!
RECORDING
A recording of the lecture will be sent out by The Feminist Lecture Program after the event finishes, within 2 hours of the end of the class. This email will also contain any resources/reading list the lecturer shares.
Please add [email protected] to your email contacts to ensure you receive the recording as expected.
Please note that the recording will expire 7 days after sending.
PAY WHAT YOU CAN
Everyone is welcome to join this Pay-What-You-Can class. We suggest a donation of 20, however, we understand that may not be possible for everybody. Please be honest and pay what you can afford so that we can continue to offer our sessions on a donation basis.
MORE FLP
Cant get enough? The Feminist Lecture Program has our very own digital archive, where you can find some of the best past lectures from our back catalogue to rent and watch ON DEMAND. Check out our ever growing collection here: https://thefeministlectureprogram.vhx.tv/
Follow us on Instagram @thefeministlectureprogram
And check out our sustainable merch from FLP Studio at https://feministlectureprogram.com/shop
& @flp__studio
And that's it!
We're really looking forward to you joining us.
