Dr. Kristine Swenson will be presenting “Mapping Imperial Skulls: Phrenological Fictions and Race” November 20th, 3-4:00 p.m., in the Meramec/Gasconade Room in the Havener Center.
“Why did phrenology, the ‘science’ of reading the shape and size of a person’s skull, hang on so much longer in imperial contexts then in metropolitan ones? How does understanding phrenology influence our reading of literary and visual texts as well as science in the Victorian period and later? What were those heads doing on the stakes around Kurtz’s hut in Heart of Darkness?”