This blog is created by students from Clemson University's spring 2009 course Women's Studies 459 - "Building Bodies: Women's Bodies in Theory and Practice." This class explores the construction of bodies from various methodological perspectives, focusing on five specific areas: theories of bodies; bodies and genders and sexes; “misbehaving” bodies; politics of bodies; and constructing bodies. We welcome comments and contributions to our posts and discussions.

07 April 2009

Body Farm

I was reading the post about the body display in Atlanta and remembered an even more disturbing display of bodies: a body farm where forensic students get to study human decomposition.
There is one in Cullowhee, NC for Western Carolina University students and is only the second one of it's kind in the nation (according to the website). I saw it on the news, way before this class, and just checked out the site. I'm just glad I'm not a forensic student. I can't imagine how it must smell on that farm.
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2 comments:

  1. RebeccaTuesday, April 07, 2009 8:50:00 PM

    Perhaps this is going to sound EXTREMELY weird but I find this less creepy than the Body World Exhibit. I agree, it must smell awful on the farm. But I just have this view that this is for an actual purpose; studying the body's decompostition is something that the forensic scientist must do. I think that part of it is that the bodies for the body farm are from people who have donated their bodies to science and have made the decision to have their bodies used on the body farm. However, as is seen in the articles about where a lot of the body world exhibit bodies come from, there is a good chance that they are from tortured and executed prisoners. I'm quite certain that they did not choose to be killed and have their body plasticized and put on display. I think that that's why I find it to be so creepy; it's a very gross violation of the body by a lot of people who certainly did not choose for that to be the fate of their body. But to be perfectly honest, I don't think that I would like to encounter either of these!

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  2. Marie on CampusThursday, April 30, 2009 5:01:00 AM

    Ok, this is kind of a side note, but have you heard of the Mutter Museum? It's a museam filled with carcuses and molds of different human diseases. They have diseases ranging from a third leg, a horn, a tail, really strange bone structures, and abnormally conjoined twins. Some of these bodies have been preserved since some time within the 1800s. These are some real bodies on display. It is really interesting the things you come across. www.muttermuseum.org is you want to check it out.

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