Annual lecture

Monkey to Man: The Evolution of the March of Progress Image

• Wednesday 27 November 2024, 5.00 pm-6.15 pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Ken Edwards Building, University of Leicester
  
• Speaker: Professor Gowan Dawson
• Book your place here

We are all familiar with the 'march of progress', the representation of evolution that depicts a series of apelike creatures becoming progressively taller and more erect before finally reaching the upright human form. Its emphasis on linear progress has had a decisive impact on public understanding of evolution, much to the annoyance of modern scientists, and the image has been endlessly parodied as an internet meme. This lecture will explore, for the first time, the origins and history of this ubiquitous and hugely consequential illustration. In a story spanning more than a century, from Victorian Britain to America in the Space Age, Gowan Dawson shows how one of the world’s most recognizable images is far more strange, contentious and paradoxical than has ever been realized.  

Speaker biography

Gowan Dawson is Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture at the University of Leicester and Honorary Research Fellow at the Natural History Museum, London. His research combines the history of science  with cultural, literary and art history. His books include Show Me the Bone: Reconstructing Prehistoric Monsters in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and Monkey to Man: The Evolution of the March of Progress Image (Yale University Press, 2024).

About the event

This Annual Public Lecture is hosted by the Centre for Victorian Studies - the longest-established specialist centre for the study of Victorian literature and culture in the UK. 

• See a list of previous Annual Lecture titles and speakers