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Kristin LaFollette, "Rehumanizing People of the Past: Bioarchaeology, Medical Museums and Archives, and the Human Remains Trade" (SUNY Press, 2026)
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Victoria Lopako
if
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Victoria Lopako
Hello, everyone. This is Victoria Lopako, one of the hosts for the New Books Network today. We are here with Dr. Kristin La Follette, Associate professor of English, Director of Composition and Affiliated Faculty of Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of Southern Indiana. Hello, Dr. La Follette, and welcome to our channel.
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Dr. Kristin La Follette
Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
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Victoria Lopako
Absolutely. And I'm so looking forward to talk to you about your book, Rehumanizing People of the Past, Bioarchaeology, Medical Museums and Archives, and the Human Remains Trait, published by State University of New York Press and scheduled to become widely available in September 2026. And I would like to get to know you better and your work. And I'm thinking whether you could tell us how you came to this project, what got you interested in the work of museums, human remains and language around them.
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Dr. Kristin La Follette
Yes, absolutely. So for as long as I can remember, I've had an avid interest in medicine and so and especially medical history. And my field is rhetoric and writing studies and professional and technical communication. And so it makes sense given that I've been so interested in medicine for so long that I gravitated toward rhetoric of health and medicine. That's really what my research focuses on. And, and so because of that interest, I like to visit medical museums. And anytime I travel, I always look to see if there's a medical museum located in that area, and I always make time to visit. And when I moved from Ohio to Indiana back in 2019, I realized that we had a medical museum in Indianapolis located near me. So I went to go visit the museum, and they were just doing this really incredible work. What the. And I'll talk about this more when we talk about chapter two. They were doing this great work that they refer to as the Rehumanizing the Specimens project. And they have all of these human remains in their collection there. But the executive director was doing this work to try to take the clinical labels and descriptions that they had previously and try to redevelop those into these narrative labels and descriptions that really helped people see and recognize the people behind these human remains in the collection, so that rather than seeing something like a specimen or an oddity, people were actually seeing that these were representations of actual people who had real lives and experiences. And I thought this is a great initiative for technical and professional communication, because obviously, language impacts our perceptions, and if we're changing the ways that we think about technical communication in these contexts, it can really help us to be able to think about these people in different ways. And so I decided to go back to that museum, the Indiana Medical History Museum, and do some research there about their approach to their Rehumanizing the Specimens project. And I was telling a friend of mine about this. He's an archeologist in the city where we live. And he was saying, everything that you're talking about really reminds me a lot of respectful terminology trends that are happening in bioarchaeology. And so he actually connected me with two of his colleagues that were working on the recovery and documentation of human remains in the downtown area where we live. And they were telling me all about this respectful terminology, which was really the inspiration for chapter one in this book. And so I worked a lot with them to learn more about those trends that are happening in bioarchaeology. And then while I was having those conversations with them, they made me aware of these osteological suppliers that exist in various places in the world, but especially these two prominent osteological suppliers in the United States, and some of the ethical concerns associated with that. And those conversations then became the basis for chapter three in the book. So all of these different things really came together to sort of inspire the chapters in Rehumanizing People of the past.
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Victoria Lopako
Amazing. And, you know, I really had. I wouldn't say fun, but, you know, it was very, very interesting to. To read about all of this and actually to. To realize that, you know, medical museums are in different places and we don't necessarily think first of them when we think about museums in general. So yeah, I'm looking forward to, to asking things about them. And then as we go through the podcast and the book focuses on rehumanizing language choices, as you mentioned, but when talking about the humans of the past and brings together bioarchaeology, medical museums and archives, as well as aspects of the human remains trait. And it engages with the ethics of technical communication and raises questions at the same time about social justice as it relates to, to the dehumanization happening in context where human remains are in question. And here I want to ask you about the impact of technical communication on people of the past. And I quote here, the possibilities of technical communication as a problem solving tool for social justice. End of quote.
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Dr. Kristin La Follette
Yeah. So language really influences how we see and experience the world. Language has the power to construct our perceptions, alter them, transform them. It impacts how we interpret reality. And so technical communication, then when we're interacting with these pieces of technical communication in these various contexts, which in each chapter I focus on, the first chapter is about bioarchaeology, the second is about medical museums. The third is about the human remains trade. But in each of these chapters, the way I sort of approach it is I outline some ethical concerns associated with each of these contexts surrounding human remains. And then I sort of lead into and here's how technical communication is sort of contributing to the dehumanization of human remains in these contexts. And then sort of offer a heuristic for how we can rehumanize the language, the technical communication in those contexts. In bioarchaeology, the first chapter, for example, I really zero in on reports. In the medical museum's chapter, I focus on labels and descriptions. And in the human remains chapter, I focus on or the human remains trade chapter, the third chapter, I really focus on labels and descriptions with osteological suppliers and frequently asked questions and donation instructions with non transplant anatomical donation organizations. And so my argument essentially is that we have all of these ethical concerns associated with each of these contexts. We have technical communication that is only adding to these ethical concerns associated with these contexts. And so my argument is essentially that when we rehumanize the technical communication that references these human remains, we're working toward more ethical practices in these fields. And additionally I frame it as social justice work. And so because when we adopt rehumanizing language and technical components communication, it has the potential to really shift the perspectives of communicators. And audiences, allowing them to better see the people of the past represented by human remains. And this adoption of rehumanizing language allows communicators to really take a collective and active approach, which is needed when addressing a problem like dehumanization. Because ultimately, human remains, the people represented by human remains, they are a marginalized group. These, these are people who can no longer advocate for themselves. They can no longer speak for themselves. Many of them were marginalized in life, which I'll talk about a little bit more as we get into the chapters. And so then when we're working toward more ethical practices in these fields, redeveloping this technical communication to be more rehumanizing, we're working toward social justice work, uplifting these marginalized people and ensuring that they're not dehumanized, that people are adequately recognizing that these are representations of actual people.
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Victoria Lopako
Absolutely. And I think this is work that has to be done and is high time for it. And as you mentioned in chapter one, bioarchaeology, the book, and I quote, employs textual analysis to explore bioarchaeological scholarship and reports, end of quote from page 36. And the chapter and the book themselves advocate for the widespread adoption of rehumanizing language in bioarchaeology, as well as in medical museums, archives, and in the human remains trade. And here I just wanted to invite you to tell us more about the tenets of bioarchaeology and, of course, the importance of rehumanizing language in relation to the human remains and also, more specifically, if we can, in relation to the current stance of research regarding the past.
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Dr. Kristin La Follette
Yes. So bioarchaeology, sometimes referred to as osteology or osteoarchaeology, it's a branch of archaeology focused on human osteological remains. So by observing and documenting human remains, bioarchaeologists are really looking to learn more about the people represented by those remains. So, for example, like estimated age at death or sex, stature, ancestry, they're really looking to learn more about those things and the way of life of these people of the past. And so when bioarchaeologists do this, they write reports, and the reports communicate what they discovered during this observation and documentation process. And these reports have traditionally used what they refer to as the language of compliance. And so those are terms that we wouldn't normally use in other contexts. Things like excavation, for example, or the excavation of human remains. That would be considered a term that is part of that language of compliance that we don't often hear otherwise. But because these, you know, so often bioarchaeologists encounter the remains of indigenous people, and they're. And I'll talk more about that in just a moment. But because they so often encounter the remains of indigenous people, the indigenous communities have worked with bioarchaeologists to redevelop this language of compliance so that it better represents and respects their ancestors. And so this language that's been developed, it's been referred to in different ways, but I'll refer to it as respectful terminology. That's one way. Like the Arizona State Museum refers to that as respectful terminology, and I refer to it as rehumanizing language. But that language of compliance has been redeveloped alongside these indigenous communities for use in these reports. And typically, those words that you see in that respectful terminology are words that would be used to reference living people. So they're not words that would not be. That we would not use to reference a living person. So, for example, we would not say that a living person is being stored somewhere. We would say that a living person is being housed somewhere or that they are located somewhere. So this respectful terminology really prioritizes that to ensure that the words used in these reports are the same terminology that we would use to reference living people, because that shifts our perception and really helps us to be able to see that these are representations of real people. They're not educational tools merely, not just oddities, specimens, curiosities. These are actual representations of people. So in my bioarchaeology chapter, I kind of talk about the development of this language, of this respectful terminology, and how even though it's been developed and it's widely available for people to find online, it really hasn't been adopted in bioarchaeology broadly at this point. And so my argument is, in this chapter, not only should we be. Should bioarchaeologists, technical communicators in this field, be adopting that respectful terminology, that rehumanizing language, to reference indigenous communities, but they should be using it to reference all people of the past, because it is in line with ethical standards in bioarchaeology that say all human remains should be respected and dignified in the same way at all times. That's a central tenet of bioarchaeology. And so, and my argument is, you know, I said in each chapter, I really kind of talk about the ways that human remains have been dehumanized and the ways that current technical communication continues that dehumanization. And so all of these reasons together show us that we need to work toward rehumanizing and Rehumanizing language is one way to do that. But I argue in the bioarchaeology chapter some of these ethical concerns include disturbing mortuary features, which mortuary feature is the respectful term to use in place of the graves? Disturbing mortuary features because some people might have chosen to be buried in that particular place. For example, it could be a religious affiliated cemetery, or maybe it's a family plot. And so disturbing, that mortuary feature is removing someone from the final resting place that they or their family had chosen for themselves. In addition, there are some harmful processes that bioarchaeologists employ to learn more about human remains and people of the past, like radiocarbon dating, for example, which determines the age of remains and requires bone powder. So it requires that a portion of the bone be pulverized into that bone powder. Museums, for example, which we'll get into more with the next chapter, have housed and displayed the remains of people of the past without their consent. This has been especially problematic for Indigenous communities. And luckily, in 1990, in the United States at least, we developed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation act, or nagpra. And so this protects Indigenous remains and ensures that if there are Indigenous remains being housed in a museum somewhere, they have to be repatriated to the community. That doesn't always happen, but that is an act that is in place to try to prevent some of the dehumanization of remains, especially with Indigenous communities. But also, bioarchaeology sort of privileges the values of Western cultures. For example, Western culture often thinks of human remains as these are no longer people. These are educational tools for us to learn from. And that is just not the case. Especially I'm talking a lot about Indigenous communities. They really don't see life and death in the same way that Western cultures often do. And so when we privilege the values of Western cultures, we're devaluing these other cultures and actually causing harm to them by some of these practices that are employed in bioarcheology. So using rehumanizing language to reference all remains challenges that dehumanization and really works to reorient the mindsets of bioarchaeologists and the audiences of the bioarchaeological reports, helping them to more clearly see the remains as representations of actual people.
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Victoria Lopako
And I think you just mentioned, right, that it's important for the bioarchaeologists, but also for the public and for the ones who are reading the reports and moving them forward. It functions in many ways like that, and it's so important to have this awareness. And you also mentioned the museums, and I was about to ask the chapter two Medical Museums and Archives, as the title stands, that looks at how this language manifests itself on labels and the descriptions we usually see in these museums. And here we talk about three places in particular. And the chapter extends its argument and brings in the field of medical humanities and medicine and proposes the use of rehumanizing language as a way of addressing these longstanding inequities. So I was thinking, as I was reading, I was thinking, how do the museums you worked with are treating their collections and what's the way in which the status quo is actually changing?
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Dr. Kristin La Follette
For chapter two, I visited four medical museums and archives, and three of them sort of served as part of the first study, and the last one served as a case study and a way for me to sort of compare the first three with the last one that I visited. But these museums include the Monroe Musnik Medical and Science Museum, which is at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, the Warren Anatomical Museum Collection at Harvard University, and the Cushing center at Yale University. And then the case study I conducted was at the Indiana Medical History Museum, which I mentioned a bit earlier. But I'll start with those first three medical museums and archives that I visited. And so my goal with this study, with this first study in this chapter was I sort of presented at first, there are all of these ethical concerns associated with medical museums. You know, typically these ethical concerns are associated with the lack of consent. So these people, when they passed away, they didn't before that provide consent for their remains to be housed and displayed in a museum. And oftentimes in life, these people were very marginalized. They were often poor or criminals. And so they didn't have control over how they were treated in life, and they haven't had control over how they were treated in death. And unfortunately, many of these remains are still housed and displayed in museums, even though people are aware that there's a lack of consent. And so I talk a bit as well about the technical communication, of course, and how the labels and descriptions that accompany human remains in medical museums often don't acknowledge any of these ethical concerns. Really, we don't see much in these labels and descriptions beyond just an explanation of the anatomy that can be seen or the pathology that's on display. And so one of the things I propose in this chapter is a rehumanizing language framework to be used in these labels and descriptions in museums to better humanize the people represented by these remains and ensure that visitors to these museums aren't looking at these remains and seeing specimens, but are actually seeing representations of real people. And so I visited these three, these first three medical museums and archives to learn more about the language that they use to reference human remains and whether or not there are any rehumanizing strategies being employed. And so the first museum that I went to, the Moose Nick at Transylvania University, I was surprised to learn that there was really very minimal technical communication available to reference these remains at all. There were so few that I was able to talk about all of the labels in my discussion of the Moose Nick in chapter two. And what I learned during my visit there is that while Transylvania's collection is very extensive, unfortunately, they don't have the staffing or the resources to really be able to oversee that collection. It's one person on campus that's really overseeing it. So it makes sense that the labels and descriptions are underdeveloped. But I argue that the people who are coming in and seeing these remains, it's tours of this collection are available by guided tour only. They're walking through this space, they're hearing what the tour guide is Saying, but the labels and descriptions are either absent, or the ones that are present are not adequately representing the people behind these human remains, who, again, were often marginalized in life. There are so many things that we could do to ensure that the people behind these remains are fully seen and acknowledged. And so the second location that I visited was the Warren Anatomical Museum Collection at Harvard. And so this used to be part of a brick and mortar museum on campus, but that is no longer the case. The Warren Anatomical Museum collection is now housed in the Countway Library as part of an archive. And this makes sense. This is part of Harvard sort of grappling with some of these ethical concerns that we've been talking about. They have made this collection an archive rather than a display because they recognize that there are many ethical concerns associated with these historical collections. So anybody who wants to access the Warren Anatomical Museum collection has to have a verified research purpose for doing so. And so. And that makes sense. That's a step in the right direction. And so when I visited the Warren Anatomical Museum collection, I viewed these labels and descriptions in one of the reading rooms in the Countway Library, and they hadn't been redeveloped since the museum was an actual brick and mortar museum. And so the labels and descriptions that you could see, see were, again, just talking about the anatomy that could be seen, the pathology that was on display, really, not a recognition of the people behind the remains in the collection. And part of this, you know, it makes sense. It's not a brick and mortar museum anymore. There aren't as many people that are viewing these labels and descriptions because it's part of an archive rather than a museum that people can easily visit. And the collection is quite extensive. So to undertake this rehumanizing process with these labels and descriptions would take quite a bit of time. But my argument is that regardless of the age of remains or how many people have access to them, this rehumanization is incredibly important and something that these museums should be thinking more in depth about. Ways to redevelop this technical communication to better represent these people. And at the Cushing center at Yale, I sort of encountered similar to the moose Nick, Whereas with the moose Nik, there were some labels and descriptions present, they weren't particularly rehumanizing. The labels that were present in the Cushing center were very, very minimal and only communicated the pathology that you were able to see with these remains. So the Cushing center is based on the collection of Dr. Harvey Cushing, who is a neurosurgeon. And so most of the remains in that collection are nervous tissue, their brains, with tumors on display, essentially. And so when you go into this space, there are all of these jars that you can look at that have this nervous tissue in there, and these small labels on the jars that indicate the type of tumor that that person had. And so, again, there's. Because these labels are so brief, there are virtually no descriptions at all in this space. When someone goes in there, reviews these labels alongside these jars of human remains, there is no acknowledgment of the people behind these remains. And again, my rehumanizing language heuristic that I talk about in this chapter really prioritizes using things like rehumanizing rhetoric and recuperative ethos, which talk about a person's lived experiences, to try to ensure that you don't merely view these remains as specimens, but actual representations of people. And it might. You know, people might think, how can you find out anything about these people represented by these remains? But in many of these museums, including the Cushing center, there were patient records that were kept that are still accessible. So while we do have to be concerned about sharing too much because we wouldn't want anybody to be identified, there are still things that could be shared about these people to ensure that visitors who are seeing these remains think about the person behind them and not necessarily just the pathology that's on display. And additionally, these are historical collections. And so a bit of information about what it would have been like for someone to live with this particular condition at that point in history would also be really helpful for adding a humanizing, rehumanizing perspective. Because medical history, medicine has changed so much over history. The treatments, the care and treatment of that particular condition would have been very different back then, and that would have been a component of that person's lived experience. The other interesting thing with the Cushing center that I'll add, that wasn't really necessarily part of my study, but something that I certainly noticed and can't really forget about after having visited that space, is that they have on display alongside these jars of nervous tissue, they have on display all of these photographs that Harvey Cushing took of his patients where their faces are visible and their pathologies are clearly on display. And it's something that I briefly mentioned in the chapter. But this is another ethical concern, something to think about, because these photographs, they're devoid of any context whatsoever. There's no labels or descriptions accompanying them. So we don't know who these people are. And essentially, their pathologies are just on display. So when we see these Photographs, rather than seeing people, we really just see these really terrible conditions that people were grappling with at this time. But that study with those three medical museums and archives is sort of juxtaposed with the case study that comes at the end of chapter two, where I say, here are three medical museums and archives that could really use some rehumanizing strategies with their technical communication. And then I present the Indiana Medical History Museum as an example, as a case study of a medical museum that has already adopted some of these rehumanizing language approaches with the development of these narrative descriptions that I talked about earlier. And so the Indiana Medical History Museum is located on the grounds of the former Central State Hospital, which was a psychiatric facility in Indianapolis. And so the remains that are in the collection are from patients who came from that facility. When they passed away, they would go to the pathology building on the hospital campus, and they were autopsied. And the reason for this was because this particular institution was hoping to learn more about mental illness during a time when it was highly stigmatized. And so while this cause was noble, the individuals whose remains were autopsied at this location, it's unclear whether or not this consent that was provided for these autopsies was coerced, because families, many of them, who often didn't have the resources to pay for a funeral, were told, if you allow us to conduct an autopsy on your loved one, we will give you a free funeral in return. So it's unclear if that consent that was provided was coerced or if those individuals that provided that consent were really hoping that their loved one would contribute to the future of the care and treatment of mental illnesses. But when Central State Hospital closed, the pathology Museum eventually, or the pathology building eventually became the Indiana Medical History Museum. And the remains that came from those autopsies were still housed in that pathology building and are now the basis of the human remains collection that are there. So even if the people didn't, you know, even if they did consent to having their loved ones have an autopsy at that location, they certainly did not consent to having their loved ones remains housed and displayed in the anatomical museum at the Indiana Medical History Museum. So even though the Indiana Medical History Museum is doing so many things right, and I really think they're concerned about their collection and ensuring that the people represented by those remains are not forgotten, and they've developed these great narrative labels and descriptions to accompany the original clinical ones. While all of that is going on, there are still some ethical concerns to think about with that collection in terms of? Is the lack of consent a problem? Should those remains be on display at all? Are the narrative labels and descriptions enough to sort of undo the harm that was caused by that coerced consent or that lack of consent? So while the Indiana Medical History Museum is a great case study for thinking about a rehumanizing approach, there are still some ethical concerns to be considered there. But overall, Chapter two is really working toward helping these medical museums and archives sort of rethink their professional and technical communication and help them think of practical ways to redevelop it so those people are better represented.
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Victoria Lopako
Fascinating and I really hope it. The great work actually that's being done there continues and expands to other institutions in the States, but also, you know, in Canada and abroad. And you know, while you mentioned consent, I think chapter three gets us into the world of commodification of human remains, where again, I think issues of consent are quite prevalent in there too. But what I wanted to ask about was about the ways these businesses developed and their relationship with museums and archives, but also their involvement in the objectification of humanity through commerce.
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Dr. Kristin La Follette
So historically, human remains have been in high demand. And there have never been enough human remains to facilitate the training, learning, training education in medicine. This has been a problem throughout time since we started using human remains to learn and teach anatomy. And so I think the way chapter three is structured is that I focus on two aspects of the human remains trade. The first is non transplant anatomical donation organizations, or NATO's. And these organizations are responsible for facilitating whole body donation. So if someone donates their remains to science, these NATO's facilitate the process of ensuring that those remains get to wherever it is that they're going to help train future healthcare providers. And these NATO's are a little different than whole body donation programs that exist at medical schools. Many medical schools have their own whole body donation programs where they'll accept remains and then use those remains in their school for education and training. But these NATO's are typically standalone organizations and they can be nonprofit and or for profit. So a nonprofit NATO will take in the remains and distribute them. And they do not charge any healthcare training facilities for these remains. They provide them free of charge to help facilitate this education and training. And for profit NATO's, on the other hand, do charge. They well, they receive the remains for free. Families do not receive any money for taking the remains, but they charge these medical training organizations to then receive the remains. So these are highly lucrative businesses. And I think that these developed out of what I was just talking about earlier, that human remains are in high demand and there are not usually enough to go around. We have to have human remains to be able to teach and learn medicine. And so it seems like this was probably seen as an opportunity to make some money. And so these for profit NATO's are in existence. But there are ethical standards associated with these NATO's. And they say that money should not be exchanged for human remains because it can cause all kinds of ethically questionable situations to arise, which I outline extensively in this particular chapter. So for example, you know, recently this was at Harvard University. The person who oversaw their whole body donation program ended up selling the remains that they received for Harvard's medical school. He ended up taking those remains and selling them to body brokers outside of the university without their knowledge. And so the families of these people didn't know that that's what was happening. And ultimately he was caught and was of course in a lot of trouble because that's, you know, not part of Harvard's philosophy. And so these kinds of things happen all the time because you can charge so much for these remains and they're so needed in medical education and training. And so these, I really believe that these for profit NATO's arose out of just people realizing that human remains were in high demand and they could make quite a bit of money from that. The other side of chapter three is I talk about osteological suppliers. And so osteological suppliers are businesses that sell human osteological remains to anybody who's willing to pay the price for them. And so the two particular I should have mentioned with the NATO's, I focus on two particular NATO's. One is called ScienceCare, one is called Medcure, and again, those are Both for profit NATO's with the osteological suppliers, I focus on two companies. One is called John's Bones, based in New York, and one is called Skulls Unlimited, based in Oklahoma. And these osteological suppliers came about because historically, medical students, to study medicine, you had to have your own set of human remains to learn from. And so as these people aged, they had these collections of human remains that they didn't know what to do with. They weren't students anymore, they no longer needed them. And oftentimes they ended up getting passed on to other people, institutions they were involved with, universities they were involved with, or maybe family members just ended up with them. And so there are these collections of human remains. It's really common, actually, that you can find them almost anywhere. And these are historical collections that people used to have to learn and study medicine. And so a company like John's Bones, for example, he says, what are people to do with these remains? You can't throw them away, you can't bury them, so we'll take them off your hands. And so people sell these human remains to companies like John's Bones, and then John's Bones will turn around and sell these remains to anybody who's willing to pay for them, which some of these prices are quite high. But the way John's Bones frames it, for example, is, you know, he's doing a service to these individuals who no longer want to be responsible for these human remains. But he's also facilitating education and the learning of anatomy by selling these remains and making them available to the public. And Skulls Unlimited does something similar. So Skulls Unlimited, they have two separate categories of human remains that they make available on their website. One set of human remains that they sell, these are what they consider to be, like, research grade. And so these remains come from donated human remains. If someone donates their remains to science, they could end up at a place like Skulls Unlimited, who then sells these remains to researchers. But on the other side, very similar to John's Bones, they also have human remains that are available to anybody who's willing to pay for them. And these are what they consider antique collections that come from medical students of the past who had to have these collections to be able to study and learn about anatomy. And so they have these human remains collections that they sell these osteological remains. And they. They both companies, they sort of frame it as this is a service. We're taking these off of people's hands, making them available to people who want to learn. But unfortunately, it sort of leaves out the ethical issues associated with those remains that I've been talking about is oftentimes the people whose remains ended up in the human remains trade ended up being in the hands of these medical students, were highly marginalized in their lives and often didn't have any control over what happened to them. And so consent was not provided. So them taking in these remains and reselling them sort of ignores all of these consent issues that we've been talking about extensively. And both of these osteological suppliers, John's Bones and Skulls Unlimited, have museums associated with them. So John's Bones, for example, owns and operates the Bone Museum, which is in Brooklyn. And Skulls Unlimited has the Museum of Osteology, which is in Oklahoma. And so at John's Bones or at the Bone Museum, for example, everything there, these are human osteological remains, the entire collection in the museum at Scott, Skulls Unlimited, their collection, they have some human osteological remains, but also animal osteological remains as well. And at the Bone Museum, it's an extensive collection. I actually was in New York last summer and visited the Bone Museum as part of the research that I was doing for this book. And there are all of these human osteological remains. He is very open. John Ferry, the owner of John's Bones and the Bone Martin Museum, he's very open about where the remains come from. And he even has some labels and descriptions in this museum space that talk about some of the issues associated with the human remains trade and how many of these individuals didn't necessarily provide consent for their remains to be used in this way. So he's very open about acknowledging the history surrounding these remains collections, but still doesn't really acknowledge that having them on display, selling them to the public, is sort of continuing that marginalization that was started in that person's life. Right. And similar to the Museum of Osteology owned by Skulls Unlimited, you know, there's sort of. There's a. A documentary, a brief Documentary called Body Brokers, where the owner of the Museum of Osteology was interviewed about the museum space and the person asked him, do you think the people represented by the remains in this collection knew when they donated their remains to science that they could end up in a museum? And he said, yes, absolutely. And I just don't think that's the case. I think when people donate their remains to science, they're typically thinking that they're going to a medical school to help facilitate future physicians learning and understanding the study and practice of medicine. I don't think most people would think that they could end up housed and displayed in a museum. And so this chapter really calls for, in the same way with chapter two, I talk about all of these ethical issues associated with these NATOs and these osteological suppliers and then talk about the ways the technical communication used by those entities further dehumanizes these individuals. And I offer a rehumanizing language heuristic. I offer two in that chapter, one particularly for the NATO's and one for the osteological suppliers. But for example, with NATO's going back to kind of what I just said about would someone know if they donate their body to science that it could end up in an osteological museum? I don't think so. And if that's not clearly communicated in the informed consent document, I'm not sure that the person who is considering donating their remains would know that either. So the humanizing language heuristic that I offer for NATO's talks about this concept of invitational rhetoric and ensuring that all of the frequently asked questions and donation instructions that are available from these for profit, NATO's clearly communicates all, all of the ways that a person's remains could be used, what happens to their remains after they complete the process of science education, whatever their remains end up being used for, all of these things need to be communicated up front for someone to be able to make an informed decision. So again, really prioritizing that concept of consent that I think has been missing for so long.
- [45:06]
Victoria Lopako
Yeah, I would imagine that it's not something that would. Maybe a lot of people thought about it as well. Right. When they donated. And you know, I'm thinking specifically with the ways in which consent is thought about in many ways. And from this chapter, it appeared, and we're going to the conclusion part, it appears that there's so much space for teaching, right? There's so much space for relearning some ways of communication. And the conclusion entitled Approaches to Teaching rehumanizing Language touches on pedagogy and continues the conversation on ethics and social justice, and, you know, pushes it a little bit further for the future. So here I just wanted to have some key points to leave this podcast with that you think there are important to stay with our listeners.
- [46:00]
Dr. Kristin La Follette
So I certainly envision this book as being something that an academic audience would be interested in, But I also wanted to move beyond that and ensure that this book had practical application, that it was something that people in bioarchaeology, medical museums, the human remains trade, could actually use to better humanize people in their work. And so the final section of the book, the conclusion, really talks about ways to teach rehumanizing language so that it's not just something that we talk about or something that we say. This would be really great if folks were doing this to better humanize people in all of these contexts. But that final section really talks about those things can't happen unless we talk about these in technical communication classrooms. And so that final chapter really advocates for, if we want to see this change, if we recognize that this dehumanization is a big problem, if we want to really enact rehumanizing language as a social justice cause, we have to teach rehumanizing language to technical, technical communicators. And so I offer in, in the conclusion, some different assignments and community projects that technical communication instructors could integrate into their classrooms to help students see and understand some of these inequities that exist, that technical communication is not neutral, and it can continue to contribute to the dehumanization of people and human remains. And that we need to be thinking about the ways that it can contribute to this dehumanization, to be able to undo those problems that have arisen and be able to really advocate for people of the past. And so, for example, one of the things that I mention as a potential assignment or activity is in a technical communication graduate class, you could have this opportunity for community service, community learning, service learning, where you reach out to a particular audience. Or I'm thinking like maybe a cultural resource management firm where they work with human remains, bioarchaeologists work with human remains. We have a cultural resource management firm in my community or a medical museum, if there are one of those close by, and offer to have your graduate students facilitate a workshop about rehumanizing language and how, what it is, how to use it, how to better implement it, and then offer sort of a service learning project where these students then come alongside the people working in these contexts to help them redevelop their technical communication so that it's more rehumanizing. I think ultimately I just. When I set out to write this book, of course it's. It stems from my research and my research interests, but it moves beyond that as well, because I truly believe rehumanizing people of the past is an important social justice cause and that these are people who can no longer advocate for themselves. So we have to ensure that these remains are not just seen as specimens or oddities, but actual representations of these people who had unique lives and experiences and relationships and characteristics. And we don't want to lose sight of the humanity behind these remains just because some of these ethical concerns and even the technical communication frames them as specimens. We don't want to lose sight of or forget their humanity. And I really want this book to be a practical guide for folks who really want to rehumanize technical communication in these different contexts.
- [49:35]
Victoria Lopako
I absolutely agree with you. And I hope maybe in the future you could pay a visit to our university and we can talk about this live and talk about the museums we have here in Montreal. But, you know, that would be a different invitation for a different time. And speaking of that, we did take a lot of your time today, so I was wondering whether you could tell us more about your current projects.
- [49:59]
Dr. Kristin La Follette
Absolutely. So I was so invested in this work that I did for rehumanizing people of the past that most of the work that I'm doing right now is an extension of that book project. And actually things that I talk about a little bit in the. In the book is like further research. So one of the projects that I'm working on right now is talking about what I refer to as postmortem rhetoric. And so I'm particularly thinking about the ways that the material artifacts in death care and postmortem spaces, like funeral home preparation spaces, autopsy rooms, for example, how these spaces, the material artifacts in these spaces, and the arrangement of these material artifacts impacts the care and treatment of human remains in those spaces. So how. You know, because I talk about quite a bit in the same way that I do with the chapters in the book, that there are all of these ethical issues associated with the care and treatment of human remains in these death care and postmortem spaces. And I kind of outlined some of these situations that have arisen at funeral homes. For example, one of the situations that comes to mind is in the 1980s, there was a funeral home, a family owned funeral home in Pasadena, California, where one of the people who worked there were stealing jewelry and organs from remains and cremating multiple human remains at once. So the families did not receive the remains of their actual loved one back. Like these atrocities like that, they're not as uncommon as you would think, and they still happen today. So my question kind of in this project is, with this postmortem rhetoric project is, are the spaces and these material artifacts in any way contributing to the attitudes that lead to this mistreatment of human remains? So that's kind of the current project that I'm working on, but I'm also going to New York in about three weeks, I think, at this point to visit the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine, the archives that are located there. I'm going to be reviewing some of the autopsy reports from their archival collection and to just learn more, a little bit more, about how the language used in these reports has sort of morphed and changed over time and what that communicates about the ways that the care and treatment of human remains in those particular contexts have morphed and changed over time. So I'm still continuing this work of rehumanizing people of the past, but really focus now. Whereas I was focused on bioarchaeology, medical museums, and the human remains trade, now I'm really focused more on these death care and postmortem contexts.
- [52:49]
Victoria Lopako
That's something that I would definitely want to read once it's published. And as you're talking, I'm thinking about the repatriation services and the ways in which, you know, you need all sorts. I'm sure you know this. You need all sorts of, you know, certificates and agreements and, you know, approvals and all of that, and the ways in which the person that needs to be repatriated. Right. It's. It's deemed as, you know, as an object in many ways. So I'm thinking whether, you know, that would be a. An aspect. Right. That could be involved in your study as well for the future?
- [53:31]
Dr. Kristin La Follette
Yeah, absolutely.
- [53:34]
Victoria Lopako
But for now, thank you so much, Dr. La Follette, for taking the time to talk to us today. And I can't wait to read more of your writing.
- [53:42]
Dr. Kristin La Follette
Yes, thank you so much. This was great.
- [53:44]
New Books Network Closing Host
Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website, newbooksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and Blue sky with the handle ewbooksnetwork and subscribe to our weekly Substack newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.
- [54:19]
Victoria Lopako
Sam.