Medieval Bodies Ignored: Politics, Culture & Flesh
University of Leeds, Institute For Medieval Studies
Friday 4th to Sunday 6th May 2018
This interdisciplinary conference will concentrate upon the cultural history of the body, particularly that relating to bodies that are ignored, by either medieval society or modern scholarship. This conference is interested in building up a sensory and somatic understanding of daily corporeal existence in the Middle Ages, with a particular focus on those elements of medieval society that are both seen and unseen. The weary carthorse, the one-legged beggar and the cradle-bound child were all bodies that were ubiquitous and thus/yet invisible; by attempting to access those elements of this landscape that were tacitly understood at the time, but difficult for the modern scholar to access, this conference hopes to encourage a richer understanding of the complexity of medieval life and culture.
Abstract submissions from a variety of disciplines are encouraged and we hope to be able to curate an exchange of ideas, strategies and theories with which we can develop a methodological support structure for interdisciplinary cultural studies.
Themes :
— Marginalised bodies (Socially, physically, legally)
— The body politic
— Seeing the unseen
— Knowledge of the body and bodily customs
— Artisans of the body, expanding notions of health and medicine
— The ignored body in space and place (e.g. war, urban/ rural, court/ Cloister)
— Ignored bodies: Dead, dis / abled, sacred, non—human animal, child, supernatural, female, racially othered, or otherwise overlooked due to status
— Methodological tactics for studying the overlooked body
Please submit abstracts for 20 min paper (max 300 words) by 28th February 2018 midday GMT to Email: medievalbodiesignored@gmail.com
Twitter: @bodiesignored
More infos on the organiser’s website
Update:
Program available here !