Donor Bodies, Medical Schools, and the Scientific Sacred
Amy Lawton, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology, University of Connecticut
A tradition has emerged among professional schools that offer gross anatomy with human dissection: Memorial ceremonies for the anonymous donors who bequeathed their bodies to the school. These memorial ceremonies have emerged as a site of the sacred in the secular worlds of medical and scientific education. The memorial ceremony reifies the sacrality of the bequeathed bodies and re-humanizes anatomical specimens. Focusing on allopathic medical schools in the United States, I investigate how these memorial ceremonies work to manage the profanity of exposure to a dead body.
This mixed-methods project is based on digital ethnography, in-depth interviews, a census of allopathic medical schools, and content analysis of donation forms.
