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Privately Published: A Descent Into Early 20th Century Mail Order Erotica, An Illustrated Zoom Lecture with Colin Dickey

Time: 7 pm EST
Admission $8 - Tickets HERE

This lecture will take place virtually, via Zoom. Ticket sales will end at 5 pm EST the day of the lecture. Attendees may request a video recording AFTER the lecture takes place by emailing proof of purchase to info.morbidanatomy@gmail.com. Video recordings are valid for 30 days after the date of the lecture.

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PLEASE NOTE: This lecture will be recorded and available for free for our Patreon members at $5/above. Become a Member HERE.

Colin Dickey invites you into the world of early 20th century mail-order erotica. In order to evade post office censors, smut peddlers like Panurge Press and Falstaff Press were obligated to dress up their offerings with a veneer of scientific dross, resulting in works that were too smutty to be of any real scientific or sociological value, and yet too riddled with academic nonsense to be properly erotic. A curiously forgotten and nearly nonsensical sub-genre, these books exist in between the finely-drawn lines of obscenity and free speech, pornography and literature, and titillation and scientific inquiry. Colin will share the history of these odd publishers and choice examples from his library, including works like White Meat, Praeputii Incisio, Black Opium, The Sword and Womankind, and An Anthropological Cabinet of Curiosities.

Colin Dickey is a writer, speaker, and academic, and has made a career out of collecting unusual objects and hidden histories all over the country. His books include The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained, Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places, Afterlives of the Saints: Stories from the Ends of Faith, and Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius. He's a regular contributor to the LA Review of Books and Lapham's Quarterly, and is the co-editor of The Morbid Anatomy Anthology. He is also a member of the Order of the Good Death, a collective of artists, writers, and death industry professionals interested in improving the Western world's relationship with mortality. With a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Southern California, he is an associate professor of creative writing at National University.