A collaborative initiative tracing interactions between medicine and natural philosophy in Early Modern Europe.

Temporary and Permanent Anatomy Theaters: the Stakes of Transition

Cynthia Klestinec  Department of English, Miami University (Ohio) Friday, January 20th, 2012 3:00pm, 208B Cathedral of Learning ABSTRACT: In the Renaissance, studying nature meant encountering books about nature and sometimes nature itself. But these encounters, as Peter Dear has indicated, tended to generate a discussion (in the period and in the historiography) between unmediated sensory experiences and experiences organized by prior conceptual categories. This paper focuses on anatomical study at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, when anatomists articulated a distinction very close to Dear¹s. It will specifically reconsider the significance of ephemeral and permanent anatomy theaters as venues for encountering nature. The relationship between the two is usually described chronologically: theaters were temporary before they were permanent. This has encouraged a second view, namely that temporary theaters initiated the study of anatomy through human and animal dissection (the encounter with nature), and permanent theaters further developed that study. This paper will argue against such a seamless transition. Even when the permanent anatomy theater was built and in use in Padua, temporary theaters continued to provide more immediate, sensory experiences for professors as well as students. Moreover, these experiences cultivated technical expertise in anatomists and among students. These experiences, that is, taught students how to experience anatomy, an element that needs to be incorporated into discussions of 'experience' in the Renaissance. Professor Klestinec will also be leading an informal seminar on material relating to her recently published book, Theaters of Anatomy: Students, Teachers, and Traditions of Dissection in Renaissance Venice (Johns Hopkins University Press 2011). If you would like to particpate, please contact Bennjamin Goldberg: metabenny [at] gmail [dot] com.

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