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AàC | Representing the Human and Animal Body. The Art and Languages of Medicine from Antiquity to the Present | Colloque international, KU Leuven (Belgique), 9-11 décembre 2025 | date-limite des propositions 1 mars 2025

Representing the Human and Animal Body. The Art and Languages of Medicine from Antiquity to the Present
KU Leuven, 9–11 December 2025

XIVth Annual LECTIO Conference 2025

Leuven Institute for the Study of the Transmission of Texts, Ideas and Images in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance

organized by Mattia Mantovani and Raf Van Rooy

The LECTIO 2025 conference is dedicated to the representation of the human body, both in itself and in its relation to other animals, from antiquity to the present day. For centuries, the “fabric of the human body” was modeled on dissections of sheep, monkeys, and pigs until anatomists like Andreas Vesalius began to challenge this practice in the first half of the sixteenth century. Indeed, since antiquity, animals have served as visual and linguistic metaphors to help decipher the appearance and inner workings of the human body. Representations of the human body have continuously been shaped against the backdrop of the entire bestiary, a legacy still evident in modern medical discourse with such terms as “goose skin” and “cancer”.

The conference aims to explore aspects of the longstanding debate surrounding the visual representation of the human and animal body. For example, many early modern physicians expressed skepticism toward visual depictions, favoring direct experience and especially the senses of touch and taste. Across centuries, the advent of new technologies—particularly print, photography, video, and digital techniques—introduced novel possibilities for representing living body while raising fresh questions about their material and epistemic implications. The same applies to evolving representational techniques themselves: perspectival anatomical drawings are a case in point. Illustrators, physicians, patients, collectors, and practitioners engaged in sophisticated debates about whether to prioritize aesthetic considerations or “intelligibility,” truthto-life or vividness, and how to balance these competing concerns.

Alongside visual representation, the conference also seeks to examine the use of words and metaphors in representing living human and animal bodies, as well as the interplay—or tension— between the media of language and imagery. It furthermore aims to trace the transmission of knowledge across linguistic traditions, focusing on issues of terminology and translation related to the human and animal body throughout history.

We invite submissions on any relevant topic in the history of medical sciences and health, broadly conceived, and encourage a wide range of disciplinary approaches, time periods, and geographical contexts, including contemporary practices. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• the use of images, words, and metaphors to visualize and describe human and animal bodies in medicine, law, theology, literature, and culture across the ages;

• the techniques and materials used in visualizing and describing human and animal bodies;

• the translation of medical knowledge in text and image, from the Greek-Arabic-Latin tradition to the present, including interactions with non-European traditions such as those of China;

• the descriptions, representations and classifications of animal species, from an intercultural and global perspective;

The visual and linguistic representation of the living body provides a unique lens through which to examine humans’ relationship with “the other,” across species and cultures. Gender differences are particularly relevant in this context, as the human body was historically equated with the adult male body in European medicine and art. This bias continues to pose challenges today, such as in drug testing, which often prioritizes male patients, resulting in treatments less suited to women’s bodies.

By focusing on representations of the body across history and into the present, the LECTIO 2025 Conference aims to bring together specialists from diverse disciplines, including medicine, intellectual history, history of science, linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, art history, book history, legal history, and religious studies. True to LECTIO’s interdisciplinary mission, this approach fosters cross-disciplinary dialogue, significantly enriching our understanding of visual and linguistic representations of the human and animal body from antiquity to the present day.

Confirmed Keynote Speaker
Sachiko Kusukawa (University of Cambridge)

Call for papers

We warmly invite scholars with relevant expertise to submit paper proposals for the 2025 LECTIO conference. Applicants can choose between two formats: talks (between thirty and forty minutes, Q&A included) and “flash presentations” (ten minutes) by means of posters or videos.

Please submit an abstract (250–300 words) by March 1, 2025, through the LECTIO website: https://www.kuleuven.be/lectio/events/lectio-xiv-international-conference-representing-the-human-and-animal-body

For any questions, please do not hesitate to email us at lectioconference@kuleuven.be

Scientific & Organizing Committee
Tinne Claes (Vesalius Museum & Leuven Centre for Health Humanities)
Pieter d’Hoine (Institute of Philosophy & LECTIO’s Director)
Inge Fourneau (Vascular Surgery & Leuven Centre for Health Humanities)
Daria Kohler (LECTIO’s coordinator)
An Smets (KU Leuven Libraries Special Collections & LECTIO)
Violet Soen (Early Modern History & LECTIO)
Geert Vanpaemel (History of Science & LECTIO)

Lisa Frankel

Étudiante en M1 de Lettres modernes à l'École Normale Supérieure de Lyon.

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OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Lisa Frankel (23 janvier 2025). AàC | Representing the Human and Animal Body. The Art and Languages of Medicine from Antiquity to the Present | Colloque international, KU Leuven (Belgique), 9-11 décembre 2025 | date-limite des propositions 1 mars 2025. Animots. Consulté le 11 février 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/135ah


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