Our own esteemed professor of death, John Troyer, expounds on what else, dead bodies, at a lecture near you, if near you happens to be New York.

“Bodies Embalmed by Us NEVER TURN BLACK!”: A Brief History of the Hyperstimulated Human Corpse

Date: Thursday, July 2, 2009
Time: 7:30 PM
Admission: Free
@ the Observatory, No. 543 Union Street, Brooklyn, New York

Troyer’s talk analyzes and critiques how the modern human corpse became an invented and manufactured consumer product through the industrialization of the dead body in mid-nineteenth century America. More specifically, this talk illustrates how the modern human corpse is an invention of specific mid-nineteenth century embalming and photographic technologies that seemingly stopped the visible effects of death as they were seen by the general public.