196111041
Dr. Janet Monge has merited much acclaim for her professional proficiency, but unlike many scientists who have castigated the carefree components of their careers, the 61-year-old contends that true success comes from never abandoning one’s inner child. Fully enamored with the preservation of her version, the resident of the 200 block of Morris Street recently tallied another nod to perpetual curiosity by co-editing “The Anatomy of the Mummy,” a special issue from “The Anatomical Record: Advances in Integrative Anatomy and Evolutionary Biology.”
“No matter where we look, there’s a treasure trove of data desperate for interpretation,” the Pennsport inhabitant said from the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, where she serves as a curator of physical anthropology. “This project became a global endeavor to communicate across boundaries and make connections among the past, present and future.”
The exhilarated expert noted the product, which comprises 26 research articles addressing mummy studies accomplished mainly through CAT scans, magnetic resonance imaging and endoscopy, stems from a 2011 Penn Museum-situated symposium that tackled the lessons that remains can inspire. Consisting of investigations from lands such as Denmark, Egypt, Korea and Peru, it reinforces her infatuation with cross-disciplinary endeavors and further validates mummification as the means to help forms to achieve some form of immortality.
“It was a valuable experience to work so heavily with the authors,” Monge said of preparing the June brainchild. “Everyone knows the significance of understanding experiences, and many people overlook or flat out negate what the dead can teach us.”
An eternal student of the departed, Monge believes the content of the collection will provide ripened examiners, budding enthusiasts and green individuals with an admiration for the global family. Once one enhances or initiates that acknowledgment, she will gladly welcome that person as a fellow temporary custodian of a segment of human history.
“My whole job is to figure out the past,” Monge said. “That really rings my bell. I have an obsession with trying to use and glean the tools that help us to learn about the people of bygone eras. With this issue of ‘The Anatomical Record,’ it’s clear to me that conservation not only of these bodies but also of the sheer joy of analyzing who has witnessed life before us is, pardon the pun, a pretty timeless treat.”
Hailing from a family of Italian immigrants who settled in West Philly, the good doctor matured through Delaware County stints in Havertown and Upper Darby. One might suppose that such a connoisseur of constant questioning would have begun her methodical mission very early in life, but Monge did not come to count anthropology as an interest until her undergraduate days at Penn State University.
“I didn’t really see myself at a disadvantage because pretty early on, I became extremely enthused about inquiring about humanity and grasping as much as I could on what defines us and how we’ve grown and developed,” she revealed. “Human evolution, human biological differences and human culture spurred me, and they’re still the key to capturing insights and sharing views.”
Acquiring her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, Monge began to drag the past out into the light more earnestly and has deemed herself quite fortunate to foster a sense of belonging through the Ivy League institution.
“I’d like to think I possess a strong moral compass,” she said with an uproarious laugh, “and I’m thrilled to point myself in the direction of work that really bolsters the quest for answers.”
Holding that passion and insight must drive everything that someone chooses as a vocational pursuit, Monge rejoices in regaling registrants at Penn and Princeton University with tales of field stops in places such as Africa, Australia and Europe. If she were not so humble, she could also tout the discovery of the world’s oldest known bone tumor and curator duties for the Penn Museum’s “Human Evolution: The First 200 Million Years” and “Year of Proof: Making an Unmaking Race” exhibitions, the former marking the largest National Science Foundation grant in the museum’s 128-year history, a $1.7 million endowment.
“I see my accomplishments from a distance,” the simple scientist said of her feats, which include international speaking engagements, expert testimony assistance in criminal defense cases, forensic consultation chores for law enforcement officials and interaction with homicide detectives in pursuing leads. “I still treat everything I do as if I were a child. There are so many people in the scientific world who are careerists. They want only self-promotion, and that’s all that results if we forget that our jobs should be fun.”
That is not to say her tasks do not involve the occasional touch of sadness, including her identification of blunt-force trauma as the cause of death for several of the men buried at Duffy’s Cut, a stretch of railroad tracks near Malvern where in 1832, 57 Irish immigrants hired to lay the line perished from what many claimed was a consequence of a cholera pandemic. As a Penn Museum release in conjunction with the issue’s unveiling notes, though, Monge wishes to promote “new and meaningful data about our shared human past.”
“I’m not one to knock the present,” the director of the site’s fossil casting program, which produces more than 3,000 bones representing all phases of human and primate evolution, said of contemporary matters, including her assisting the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University dental schools in showing that children are exhibiting signs of dental and skeletal maturation earlier than youngsters from a generation ago. “It’s vital to see how the present takes cues from the past. It’s all relative and fascinating, too.”
Visit onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.v298.6/issuetoc
Contact Managing Editor Joseph Myers at jmyers@southphillyreview.com or ext. 124.
196111041
196110671
