The following description comes from the event organizer.

Centered on the heyday of practical special effects in 1980’s horror and science fiction, this 3 week online seminar will examine the history of bodily transformation from the earliest days of cinema through contemporary films and visual arts. Through comparative viewings, short readings, and weekly discussions we will examine the concepts of the cinematic body;  representation of disease, bodily dissolution, and reparation; and the viewer relationship to on-screen physicality.s Discussion sessions will take place once a week. The third and final session will contain a special guest presentation by Nelson Lowry who has worked as head production designer for Danny Boyle, Tim Burton, Wes Anderson, as well as recent Portland based Laika films.

The 1980’s are considered the golden era of gore, goo, and cinematic bodies in transformation. Censorship was looser than it had been in decades; physical special effects technologies were advancing rapidly; and both low budget and massive genre spectacles were in high demand. At the same time the AIDS crisis was raging, fears of nuclear war pervaded culture, and the world was rushing into the digital age. The bodily images from the era not only reflect its particular contradictions and fears, they also carry within them a history of representation and cultural conceptions of the body that go back to beginning of cinema. We may have left latex skin and rubber organs behind but in these times, when the vulnerability and strength of the body are the primary global issues, there is a greater need than ever to examine the ways we have shape and are shaped by images of the transforming body.