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“Frankenstein Senior: the scientific foundations of a myth in the Collections of Palazzo Poggi” is a research project aimed at enhancing and promoting the cultural heritage of the University. The project is framed within The European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 supported by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities.
The project shows how the scientific roots of the myth created by the English writer Mary Shelley lies in the experiments of Luigi Galvani and his nephew Giovanni Aldini and in the notion of “animal electricity” introduced in Bologna at the end of the 18th Century. With Aldini, the notion of animal electricity travelled throughout Europe in the form of shocking-demonstration performed on dead bodies in Paris and London and acted as inspiration for the Shelley’s masterpiece “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus”, published in 1818.
The contents of the project are conveyed in different communicative languages: a docudrama, a series of public events performed within the Museum of Palazzo Poggi, conferences and publications.
