Body Inside a Body: Couture and the Unstable Anatomical Boundaries of Dress

           Elsa Schiaparelli (1890 – 1973) was as much an artist as she was an anatomist. By this, I do not mean to contend that her experience lay in the meticulous work of anatomy labs or dissection theaters, but rather that her sartorial silhouettes, bodices, embroideries, and embellishments demonstrate a singular sort of reverse dissection…

Bodies That Resist Cure: Trauma, Monstrosity, and Care Beyond the Clinic

In Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017) and Frankenstein (2025), the figure of the monster operates as a powerful commentary on violence, trauma, and healing. Posing the central question of what care looks like when our institutions—medical, political, and scientific—fail to provide it, del Toro’s monsters ask us if the clinic, the lab,…