A new exhibit drawn from the USC Libraries Special Collections delves into the history of anatomic mutation and representations of the monstrous. Curated by rare books librarian Derek Quezada and Special Collections head Sue Luftschein, Human Haunted World: Man as Monster in Early Printed Books is now on display outside the entrance to Special Collections on Doheny Memorial Library's second floor.
The human form has been revered across cultures for thousands of years. It is as familiar to us as any feature of our daily lives; we see each other, we see ourselves. But when we see that form emerging from something else, subsumed in something else, or mixed with some other "thing"—be it in the root of a plant, the body of a lion, or even another person—it becomes something otherworldly, something unfamiliar and something altogether monstrous.
These fifteenth and seventeenth-century fantastical mutations of nature will be on display through the end of October.