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Katie Snow

@katiesnow.bsky.social
1.5K followers 553 following 57 posts

Researching bodies across the medical humanities. Book on breasts in caricature and satirical prints forthcoming from Rutgers. Wellcome postdoc @ University College Dublin, Drinking Cultures project 🥃

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Reposted by Katie Snow
Christine Slobogin @slobogin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
A labor of love and laughter!! Our book _Sick Jokes_ is finally out with @manchesterup.bsky.social ! Working on this with @katiesnow.bsky.social and @lauracowley.bsky.social has been a blast, and our contributors are BRILLIANT! Have your libraries order it!!
Me (a white woman with shortish dark blonde hair in a black and white horizontal striped dress) smiling while standing in front of a green plant holding two copies of the book _Sick Jokes: Visual Histories of Humour, Health and the Body_Close up of the cover of _Sick Jokes: Visual Histories of Humour, Health and the Body_. The cover includes the title in orange and "Edited by Christine Slobogin, Katie Snow and Laura Cowley" in yellow. The cover image is a black-and-white photograph of a white man with glasses and an oxygen tube and hospital gown pulled up to reveal both a Karposi's sarcoma and a happy face tattoo.Photo of two pages at the beginning of the book.

A selection: 

A note on the cover image
When deciding which image from this volume to put on the cover, we knew that we wanted something that captured one of the book's central themes: the use of humour as a means of reclaiming power from the medical systems or diagnoses that so often leave us feeling powerless. Marc Geller's photograph of Tom Shearer does exactly that, with Tom's personality - embodied in his smiley face tattoo and steady gaze - posing a pointed challenge to medical and cultural assumptions about what it means to be, or to joke about being, 'sick'. The context in which this portrait (one of many, discussed in Jo Michael Rees's Chapter 6, in this volume) was taken also suggests the importance of laughing in the faces of death and danger, of creating community and of sharing experience - other prominent themes throughout Sick Jokes.
We are very aware of the ethical quandaries of sharing patient photographs, especially on a book cover, publicly viewable on shelves and on screens. While we cannot get consent from Shearer for this specific use of his photograph, we have received permission from Geller. The portrait was taken by Geller on assignment for the American LGBT magazine The Advocate in 1991, to accompany an interview about Shearer and Beowulf Thorne's radically funny wine Diseased Pariah News. Geller stated in an email to us that he felt Tom's bravery in creating such a zine comes through in the way he faced the camera. While we cannot know how Shearer or Thorne imagined these portraits might circulate after their deaths, the photographs belong to a project and artistic friendship that was itself public-facing.  
We hope that this photograph draws people into this volume while also showing Shearer as he wanted to be perceived. We hope that we have done him - and other patients, artists and jokers - justice.
Christine Slobogin, Katie Snow and Laura Cowley Dedications
For Cindy Slobogin, who taught me to love art - Christine Slobogin
For Rory Ivor Snow, who can find the funny in anything - Katie Snow
licence, thanks to the supertial commercial us, dischindle
For Sue Cowley, who was a good patient but a far better teacher -
Laura Cowley
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Greg Jenner (Historian) @gregjenner.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
The crisis in UK higher education is worsening week by week — Exeter University is one of the best in the UK, with superb lecturers (and several You’re Dead To Me guests), but it’s planning massive job cuts in History, Archaeology, Classics — see the petition below to lend your voice in support
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Fred Cooper @histloneliness.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Me in Saturday's Lancet, thinking about justice, history, and time in relation to the infected blood scandal: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
thelancet.com
Justice out of time: infected blood and patient knowledge
Questions over right and wrong in past medical practices all too frequently resist easy answers. Formal ethical frameworks, and the imperfect ways that they are interpreted and applied, are products o...
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Christine Slobogin @slobogin.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
PROOFS! @katiesnow.bsky.social @lauracowley.bsky.social @manchesterup.bsky.social
First page of new book.

Sick jokes
Visual histories of humour,
health and the body

Edited by

Christine Slobogin,
Katie Snow and Laura Cowley

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESSFirst page of table of contents.

Contents

List of figures
List of contributors 
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Christine Slobogin, Katie Snow and Laura Cowley

Part I – Pathologies and power in print
1 ‘Uncorking Old Sherry’: Alcohol, the body and political decline in visual culture and the case of Richard Brinsley Sheridan – Callum D. Smith 35
2 Bedroom eyes as bedside manner: Humorous expressions
of medical impropriety in mid-nineteenth-century visual culture – Rebecca Whiteley 63
3 ‘The top set’s artificial, but the bottom’s my own!’:
Comic representations of false teeth and denture
users in mid-twentieth-century British seaside postcards – Georgia Haire 95
Part II – Dying laughing: Death, disfigurement, disease, and disability
4 Dancing, laughing and sexing (with) death: Edvard
Munch’s gendered medical humour – Allison Morehead 119Second page of table of contents.

5 Tube pedicles and positionality: The visual humour of a plastic surgery technique – Christine Slobogin 146
6 The bittersweet look(s) of AIDS: Consuming the ironic
waste of HIV/AIDS imagery (and other butts of the joke)
in Diseased Pariah News – Jo Michael Rezes 173
7 Irony, assisted dying and the Disabled Avant-
Garde – Laura Cowley 202
Part III – Comical health communications
8 ‘Doctor, Are You Speaking in Tongues?’: Humour and
the health humanities of Selma and Lois DeBakey –
Jeffrey S. Reznick 235
9 Tough Shit Thomas and Peanut Pete: Harm reduction
comics and British identities in the 1990s – Peder Clark 262
10 Pandemic funnies: Humour in COVID-19
comics – Soha Bayoumi 291
Index 322
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Our edited volume Sick Jokes: Visual histories of humour, health and the body is almost here! It's up on the Manchester University Press website for preorders, ahead of its publication this September 🤩 🥳 📣 📖 lnkd.in/e47UeTsd
Cover image of a male hospital in-patient looking directly at the camera, a smiley face tattoo exposed on his arm.
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Christine Slobogin @slobogin.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Our edited volume _Sick Jokes_ is officially on the @manchesterup.bsky.social website!! manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526187970/
manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
Manchester University Press - Sick jokes
Sick jokes - Browse and buy the Hardcover edition of Sick jokes by Christine Slobogin
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Fred Cooper @histloneliness.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
If you're interested in loneliness and epistemic injustice, I'm giving a talk about my book project next week! All the way back and all the way down: epistemic injustice and the history of loneliness 30/03/2026, 1pm - 2:15pm. epistemicinjusticeinhealthcare.org/epic-seminar...
epistemicinjusticeinhealthcare.org
Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare
The Universities of Bristol, Nottingham and Birmingham have been awarded a major £2.6 million Wellcome Discovery Award.
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Prof Laurie Stras @lauriestras.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
This will only interrupt your scrolling for a few seconds. Just do it, please?
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Joe Jukes @joejukes.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
NEW CfP! 🌈🎓 📸 VISUAL HISTORY NOW: Using photographs to study the history of gender, sexuality, and space 8-9 Oct, Tampere Uni, Finland If you research gendered, sexual, queer or trans histories using visual materials, this is the conference for you! Deadline 31 March www.tuni.fi/en/research/...
tuni.fi
Presenting queer visual history (PicMe) | Tampere universities
Tampere University and Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) constitute the Tampere Universities community. Our areas of priority in research and education are technology, health and societ...
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BSECS @bsecs.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
***DEADLINE EXTENSION TO THE 2 MARCH*** We are extending the deadline for applications for the #BSECS-BECC award to the 2 March. £400 to support research using Birmingham's extensive #18thC resources held across the city @unibirmingham.bsky.social #skystorians www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/cen...
birmingham.ac.uk
BECC-BSECS Postgraduate Fellowship - University of Birmingham
The Birmingham Eighteenth-Century Centre and the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies run an annual fellowship.
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
A sneak peak of our new book, Sick Jokes, which shares some of the best medical humanities research happening around visual humour & health! It's been so great to work on this w/ our contributors. On the @manchesterup.bsky.social website come spring 🌱 @slobogin.bsky.social @lauracowley.bsky.social
Sick Jokes Cover Sick Jokes content
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
🥳 New publication! Art & the Critical Medical Humanities is now online, fully open access. Thrilled to have co-written “Punchlines and power: visual humour as a disruptive tool for the critical medical humanities" w. @slobogin.bsky.social & Laura Cowley: www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-de...
bloomsburycollections.com
Art and the Critical Medical Humanities
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will pooley @willpooley.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
all academic applications should have consolation prizes. doesn’t have to be much, like a mug that says “i applied for leverhulme 2020” or a t-shirt “UKRI reject 2023”
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Fred Cooper @histloneliness.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
I'm really excited to finally be able to share this after months of work - our new Project EPIC report on the epistemic determinants of health. With over 20 contributors, we make the case for incorporating this new framework into existing determinants of health models: bci-hub.org/documents/ep...
bci-hub.org
The Epistemic Determinants of Health
Health and illness are significantly determined by knowledge and its communication. At first glance, this might seem obvious; people use healthcare systems when they suspect that something might be wr...
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Dubliners— this is today! 4.30pm, John Henry Newman building ⬇️
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MancHSTM @manchstm.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
On 21 October, co-hosted by the Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture, our speaker will be Dr Brandy Schillace, on Hope in the Dark: How a daring team of sexologists built the world’s first trans clinic in the shadow of the Third Reich. blogs.manchester.ac.uk/chstm/2025/0...
blogs.manchester.ac.uk
CSSC and CHSTM Joint Seminar, 21 October 2025
Dr Brandy Schillace Hope in the Dark: How a daring team of sexologists built the world's first trans clinic in the shadow of the Third Reich
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BSECS @bsecs.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
THIS IS IT! You have until 11.59pm TONIGHT to submit your proposals for #BSECS2026 Ease yourself into the New Year by joining us @pembrokeoxford.bsky.social, 7-9 January 2026 #skystorians #18thC 🗃️ www.bsecs.org.uk/conferences/...
bsecs.org.uk
BSECS - Submit a Proposal
Submit a Proposal. BSECS welcomes proposals for the Annual Conference. The deadline for submission of papers and panel proposals is usually November.
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Dr Anna Jamieson @annafranjam.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
For the weekend crowd: CFP for online workshop *Object Stories in Health and Medicine 1700-1900*, deadline for abstracts Monday 6 October 💫
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BSECS @bsecs.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
***CFP DEADLINE EXTENSION TO 22 SEPTEMBER 2025*** Due to some members experiencing issues with our submission site, we have decided to extend the #BSECS2026 #CFP deadline by a whole week. Get scribbling #skystorians! #18thC 🗃️
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Fred Cooper @histloneliness.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
📢 I'm thrilled to announce the full - and stellar - lineup for our upcoming symposium on critical approaches to like and dislike in medicine, law, and society! 📢 Bristol Uni, 15th October - register (for free) below!! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/critical-a...
eventbrite.co.uk
Critical Approaches to Like and Dislike in Medicine, Law, and Society
Critical approaches to like and dislike in medicine, law, and society: University of Bristol
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Planning the first month of term? Don’t miss @elementaladam.bsky.social at UCD, speaking as part of the Drinking Cultures project! All are welcome to this in-person seminar: “Hate, Shame, and Boozy Banter in the Eighteenth Century” 🍻 Full abstract here: texerenetwork.com/drinkingcult...
Poster advertising talk with time, date and place details
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BSECS @bsecs.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
The deadline for submitting proposals for #BSECS2026 is only two weeks away. Get scribbling! #skystorians #18thC 🗃️ This year's theme is 'Big and Small', 7-9 January, Pembroke College, Oxford. www.bsecs.org.uk/conferences/...
bsecs.org.uk
BSECS - Submit a Proposal
Submit a Proposal. BSECS welcomes proposals for the Annual Conference. The deadline for submission of papers and panel proposals is usually November.
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Pam Lock @pamplemoussepam.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
Please help. Please sign. I work on a part-time degree for mature students to study for a BA in English Literature & Community Engagement. Its direct access and designed for those who didn't or couldn't go to Uni at 18. Bristol plan to close it. We want to save it. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com
Save our pioneering widening participation undergraduate degree in English Literature and Community Engagement at the University of Bristol
19 August 2025 Dear Evelyn Welch (Vice-Chancellor) cc Judith Squires (Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost), Tansy Jessop (Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education and Students) The School of Humanities has ...
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Society for the Social History of Medicine (SSHM) @sshmedicine.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
📣Exciting News 📣 Dates & host institution for the SSHM Biennial Conference #SSHM2026 are confirmed! Save the Date in your planners 📅 Theme and CFPs to follow later #histmed #medhumanities #histSTM
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Dr Jo Ball @drjeball.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
A lovely little bronze #Roman mouse figurine, shown holding a morsel of food in his little front paws (a nut or seed maybe?), perhaps about to take a little nibble from it. It is about 1900-2000 years old 🐭 (📷 Christie's) 🏺 AncientBlueSky #Archaeology #RomanArchaeology
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Helen King @helenking.bsky.social · 24/07/2025
The white cis body as the default setting for ‘human’? @nursingclio.bsky.social has published an interview I did with the curator of a new exhibition nursingclio.org/2025/07/23/u...
nursingclio.org
“Unseen: Inequality in Medicine” at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Leiden
The medical field has long treated the 70 kg white male body as the norm — an assumption that continues to shape healthcare today. From March 7, 2025 to March 8, 2026, the award-winning Rijksmuseum…
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
News from last year, but a good reminder that there are many satirical prints in this collection ☺️
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Surgeons' Hall Museum @surgeonshall.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
This collection of foreign bodies removed from the oesophagus was donated to the museum in 1928.
A cardboard sheet with 18 tins of foreign bodies attached to it  1. - 12.: Halfpennies  13. Shilling 14. Florin 15. Button 16. Whistle 17. Chicken bone 18. Flakes of enamel.
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dr hardeep dhindsa (he/him) @hardeepsdhindsa.bsky.social · 27/06/2025
Deeply honoured to say that I am one of the recipients of an Early Career Fellowship! From May 2026, I’ll be spending 3 years at Edinburgh’s Art History department (@edincollegeofart.bsky.social) to research Whiteness and Greco-Roman antiquity in eighteenth-century British history paintings
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
Eeeek this will be good'un! Happy publication day @slobogin.bsky.social ⭐ Essential reading for all medical history/medical humanities visual culture people.
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Fiona Johnstone @drfijohnstone.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
Are you working in #VisualMedicalHumanities with a specific focus on art, anatomy and medicine? The BMJ Medical Humanities has just released this CFP for articles on "visuality in medical practice and history". Looking forward to seeing how this moves the field forward! mh.bmj.com/pages/topic-...
mh.bmj.com
Topic Collection: Visual Medical Humanities | Medical Humanities
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Celso Neto @celsoneto.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
🚨Job Alert🚨 Looking for a 3 year postdoc in STS? Join us at Egenis! #STS #metascience #philsky
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James Kneale @jameskneale.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
I was chairing the first panel so you will just have to take my word for it when I say that the papers by Vanessa Höving, Marta Ramón García, Katie Snow were all brilliant... here's Marta in our very fancy room at the Museum of Literature #womenandalcohol #dangerouspleasures
Marta Ramón García speaking in our swanky conference room at MOLI
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
What a gorgeous setting for the @drinkingstudies.bsky.social women and alcohol #dangerouspleasures conference this week 🌸
MoLiFemale StatueMaeve bunchy quote sign 'it was peaceful there and unfamiliar. Not like almost every square inch of Dublin'
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Christine Slobogin @slobogin.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Draft manuscript IN! @katiesnow.bsky.social @lauracowley.bsky.social
Screenshot of title page.

_Sick jokes: Visual histories of humour, health and the body_

Edited by:
Christine Slobogin
Katie Snow
Laura Cowley

Series:
Social Histories of Medicine
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Dr Francis Osis @fosis.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Medicine AND quilting in GLAM?? if it wasn't in London this would be my dream job 😭
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
A welcome new publication yesterday for those teaching medical humanities in UK medical schools, asking some key questions. Using visual body histories with medical students at Exeter and Plymouth (both recognised as innovators in the field) has been by far my most radical and rewarding teaching.
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Neurodivergent Humanities Network @ndhumanities.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Exciting new CFP for a Special Issue of the OA journal, 'Neurodiversity' thinking through the critical turn(s) in #neurodiversity studies across the arts, humanities & social sciences. Editors @ainokash.bsky.social @louisecreechan.bsky.social @danielpjones.bsky.social & @dramypearson.bsky.social
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
For those on LinkedIn, I'm giving it a good go... 👋 👀 www.linkedin.com/in/katiesnow2025
linkedin.com
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Fred Cooper @histloneliness.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
📢 Deadline approaching!! 📢 Just ten days to send me an abstract for our symposium: Critical approaches to like and dislike in medicine, law, and society | University of Bristol |15/10/2025 epistemicinjusticeinhealthcare.org/epic-events/...
epistemicinjusticeinhealthcare.org
Call for Papers
Call for papers: Critical approaches to like and dislike in medicine, law, and society
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Alexandre Klein @alexandreklein.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
(Call for Papers) International Working Group on Medical Wax Models & Moulages histoiresante.blogspot.com/2025/05/grou... #histmed
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Fascinating (& horrifying) to read about @midwifeteacher.bsky.social's Lost Mothers Project today. I've been thinking a lot recently about how we represent & experience breastfeeding & milk production (or suppression) within prisons & other systems of oppression. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
theguardian.com
‘The pain was worse than giving birth’: why are so many women separated from their babies in prison?
First they had to give birth in custody, then their babies were taken away. Sometimes they never got them back. Here’s what 29 women told the Lost Mothers Project
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Sarah Bull @sarahebull.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Woo hoo, you can now pre-order Selling Sexual Knowledge, which is coming out next month! (or, uh, just download the FREE electronic version from Cambridge Core when it comes out) Many thanks to those who read and blurbed the book 😊 www.cambridge.org/ca/universit...
cambridge.org
Selling Sexual Knowledge | Cambridge University Press & Assessment
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Pleased to see this vol published as part of Springer's Biomedical Visualisation series. It includes a chapter on 'The Evolution, Implementation, and Impact of Representative Research Practices in Anatomy Education,' co-authored w/colleagues at @plymuni.bsky.social www.linkedin.com/posts/katie-...
linkedin.com
So nice to see this volume published by Springer Nature! I co-authored a… | Katie Snow
So nice to see this volume published by Springer Nature! I co-authored a chapter, 'The Evolution, Implementation, and Impact of Representative Research Practices in Anatomy,' with colleagues a...
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Radical Humanities Laboratory @radhumslab.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
Oisín Wall’s new book, Prisoner’s Bodies, is available free online or as a PDF here: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK609... Or you can buy a paperback here: www.mqup.ca/prisoners---...
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Prisoners’ Bodies
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Pam Lock @pamplemoussepam.bsky.social · 15/04/2025
If you are based in Dublin, this looks great for @drinkingstudies.bsky.social bods. Alcohol and politics in 19th C visual culture sounds fab! texerenetwork.com/drinkingcult...
texerenetwork.com
‘Uncorking Old Sherry’: Alcohol, the body, & political decline in visual culture.The case of Richard Brinsley Sheridan - Drinking Cultures
Upcoming talk by Dr Callum D. Smith: 17 April, 4pm Location: Rm C217, John Henry Newman Building, University College Dublin Fig. 1. […]
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Fiona Johnstone @drfijohnstone.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Art and the Critical Medical Humanities is almost out in the world! Edited by me, Allison Morehead & Imogen Wilshire, & with over 45 contributors, 29 chapters in a variety of formats, and 50 images, this will be available open access from Bloomsbury in December. www.bloomsbury.com/uk/art-and-t...
bloomsbury.com
Art and the Critical Medical Humanities
This agenda-setting edited volume makes a forceful case for the contribution that art – its practices and its histories – can make to debates and developments i…
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 11/04/2025
Lovely to see this amazing project coming to fruition, and even lovelier to have been a small part of it!
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Katie Snow @katiesnow.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
For those around @ucddublin.bsky.social on 17 April, Callum Smith is joining the Drinking Cultures project to give a talk, ‘Uncorking Old Sherry’: Alcohol, the body, & political decline in visual culture: The case of Richard Brinsley Sheridan'. It's going to be a good one! 🍾 Newman building, C217.
Uncorking Old Sherry by James Gillray, satirical print
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Steve Murdoch @profmurdoch.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Post Doc! "Materialising the Scots in Northern Europe c.1500-1750: Mobilities, Communities and Materiel Culture" Focus on the Netherlands, Scandinavia or Poland www.iash.ed.ac.uk/iash-nationa... #Skystorians 🗃
iash.ed.ac.uk
IASH-National Museums Scotland Fellowship | IASH
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