Queer Anatomies

Gay physicians and aesthetes of all stripes will enjoy Sappol’s chatty style, peppered with winking asides, and appreciate his deep scholarship and intimate familiarity with anatomical art. * Gay & Lesbian Review *Queer Anatomies upends all that we know and assume about the dissected body, the male gaze, and the interior life of early anatomists. Michael Sappol is erudite and learned, clever and brash, always surprising, and consistently brilliant. * Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2004) *Rethinking ‘queerness’ through the historical lens of artistic anatomy, Michael Sappol opens the closet on the lushly erotic, macabre—queer—pleasures in exquisite prints of dissected bodies. Wearing its erudition lightly, Sappol’s witty take in Queer Anatomies informs, delights and challenges in equal measure. * Anthea Callen, Professor of Art, Australian National University, Australia *Lavish, provocative, and richly revealing, this is a visually dazzling and intellectually playful meditation on the transgressive culture of 18th- and 19th-century anatomical illustrations and the men who created, scrutinized, and collected them. * John Warner, Professor of History, American Studies, and History of Science and Medicine, Yale University, USA *Michael Sappol looks at what others ignore, teasing out the places where scholarship and sexuality, medicine and pleasure meet. This exquisitely researched, beautifully written and illustrated book will provoke, fascinate, and delight. * Joanna Ebenstein, Founder of Morbid Anatomy, author of Anatomica: The Exquisite and Unsettling Art of Human Anatomy (2020) *

Michael Sappol is Visiting Researcher at Uppsala University, Sweden, and a historian of the visual culture and performance of medicine and science, with a focus on anatomy and the Body. Between 1998 and 2016, he was Historian, Scholar-in-Residence and Exhibition Curator at the National Library of Medicine, USA.