Fragment of Plaque with Ascension, Mary, and Apostles, 1858, after early 9th century original
12017-10-23T11:27:09-07:00Elena Gittlemana967dcf121716f68925595dba3ac34f987e64187224501Bryn Mawr College 1858.183plain2017-10-23T11:27:09-07:002008071514194120080715141941-0400Elena Gittlemana967dcf121716f68925595dba3ac34f987e64187
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1media/NIM_keynote_poster FINAL-page-001.jpg2017-10-23T11:22:28-07:00Body10plain2017-11-04T02:46:00-07:00What can this plethora of sculpturally-rendered heads, feet, and torsos tell us about the human body in the ancient world? In their fragmentary states, these objects are materially and ideologically linked to the past, but they also reveal an excessive corporeal imaginary as we view them in the present.
Used in contexts such as religious dedications, funerary rituals, theatre productions, decorative arts, and philosophical metaphor, representations of the body held prominence of place in the ancient collective mind and the daily lives of individuals. Many of these concepts, stigmas, and narratives established a Western classical typology for representing the human body that persists into the modern era. Remaining today as fragments, however, these body parts become accumulate additional meanings as uncanny, talismanic, idealized, monstrous, surreal, fetishistic, legible, and experiential forms.