Medieval Sermon Studies I: Disease, Health, and Sermons
Contact Person: Jessalynn Bird ; jbird@saintmarys.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Medieval Sermon Studies Society
This session explores the rhetoric, metaphors, and physical realities of spiritual, mental, and physical illness in the medieval period in pastoral literature and sermons. Discourse between pastoralia and other genres is encouraged (liturgy, hagiography, miracle stories, vernacular literature, hospital records and medical treatises).
Of Pestilences and Plagues: Sickness in the Medieval Court
Contact Person: Shawn Cooper
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Courtly Literature Society (ICLS), North American Branch
The International Courtly Literature Society (North American Branch) invites paper proposals for a sponsored session: Of Pestilences and Plagues: Sickness in the Medieval Court. We welcome submissions addressing the depiction of illness in courtly literatures, chronicles, histories, and other artistic media. Comparative readings of medieval and modern depictions of sickness in the setting of the medieval court are also welcome. Presenters will receive a year’s membership in the ICLS-NAB, and may be eligible for presentation-related grants and awards of the society.
Trauma, Disability, and the Anchorhold
Contact Person: Michelle Sauer
Principal Sponsoring Organization: International Anchoritic Society
Trauma studies and work that links studies of disability and trauma finds ample representation in the texts and contexts of anchorites, and their frequent citation of Christ’s wounds and the valorization of sickness, pain, and distress in the anchorhold. For this panel, we are seeking papers that interrogate the role and use of trauma and its attendant concerns—witnessing, wounds, pain—in the study of anchorites, their texts, and the responses to both. Papers are welcome that touch on the material realities of these figures and their receptions, or which concentrate on the figurative significance of trauma.
The “New Paradigm” of Plague Studies: Expanded Geographies and Chronologies of the Medieval Pandemics
Contact Person: William York
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medica: The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages
In 2014, Monica Green wrote “the field of historical plague studies … must be redefined in three dimensions: its geographic extent, its chronological extent, and the methodological registers we use to investigate it.” Since then, work on the full extent of both the 1st and 2nd Plague Pandemics has continued as Green anticipated, now encompassing the Mongol Empire (and perhaps the Xiongnu before them) and extending, perhaps, into sub-Saharan Africa. Whereas prior scholarship focused on the Mediterranean and Europe, pandemic studies must necessarily cast a wider net. This panel invites presentations of the latest work in the field.
The Globalization of Medieval Medicine: Ideas, Authorities, and Products 1000-1600
Contact Person: William York
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medica: The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages
This panel explores the globalization of medieval medicine, beginning in the eleventh century via the Silk Road and continuing through the early modern era of exploration and discovery. It will look at how medieval European medical practice and theory changed due to the influx of new ideas, practices, and pharmaceutical products. Panelists will also consider how medical consumerism and the transmission of ideas were affected by economic, religious, cultural, political, and technological changes, such as the advent of printed medical texts and the popularization of medical authorities outside of the ancient canon.
Age in Monastic Life
Contact Person: Amelia Kennedy ; amelia.kennedy@uni-graz.at
From child oblates to venerable seniors, age plays a crucial role in monastic life. Yet it is easy to overlook mentions of age in historical sources as merely recording objective facts. This panel explores age as a socially constructed category within the monastery, asking how “age” was calculated, asserted, and negotiated. We invite proposals for 15-20-minute papers analyzing concepts of age and the life-cycle in medieval monasticism: How did monastic authors understand the aging process? How were relationships among different generations governed? What are the relationships between age and gender, authority, disability, or spirituality?
From Farm to Sick Bed: Food, Illness, and Medicine in the Medieval West
Contact Person: John Bollweg ; admin@mensetmensa.org
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Mens et Mensa: Society for the Study of Food in the Middle Ages
From epidemics traced to so-called “wet markets” dealing in food and medicine to the pursuit of longevity through the “Mediterranean Diet” — foods, diet, and regional foodways to be presented as both a cause and cure of illness. For this session, we seek papers on any examples (historical, literary, natural philosophical, religious, etc.), from Europe or the Mediterranean basin, in the years 500 C.E. through 1600 C.E., of food or drink as either the creator or the corrector of diseases physical or moral, individual or communal. This session continues the theme of a Fall 2021 conference.
Disability, Disease, and Health: New Voices, New Directions
Contact Person: Leah Parker
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages
Paper proposals on any topic relating to disability, disease, and/or health will be welcomed, on any period between c. 500–1500 and on any geographical area. Topics might include, but are not limited to: lived experiences of impairment, medicine, healing, stigma, pandemic, contagion, textual or visual representations of bodily difference, archaeological evidence of impairment, theological/political/social attitudes toward disability, the body in law, etc. Presenters may be emerging in terms of their career (e.g., graduate students or early career researchers) or emerging by bringing their research into a new direction (i.e., newly engaging with the study of disability, disease, and/or health).
Medicine and Health Care in Medieval Iberia
Contact Person: Elisa Manzo
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Association of Graduate and Early Career Scholars of Medieval Iberia (AGECSMIberia)
Studies on premodern medicine have had a remarkable increase in the last decades and the recent global pandemic has done no more than further increase this trend. This session invites contributions on medicine and health care in Medieval Iberia from graduate and early career scholars, coming from a range of backgrounds and working on different aspects of this field. Potential topics may include: continuity or disruption in the medical practice between Roman and Post-Roman Iberia, regulations to safeguard physicians and patients, Jewish medicine in Christian and Arabic milieus, women healers’ status, the social effects of the so-called “medical pluralism”.
Medicine in the Global Middle Ages
Contact Person: Meg Oldman ; oldman@tarleton.edu
Principal Sponsoring Organization: Medieval Makars Society
After a year, the world is beginning to see an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout it all, we have heard various ways to cope with or test our resilience against the novel coronavirus, from logical public health recommendations such as mask wearing and hand washing to abstract suggestions like injecting bleach and holding our breaths for 10 seconds. Suggestions such as these are nothing new. Prior to public health initiatives we know today, folklore was an important method of transmission for medical knowledge. We are looking for papers that explore global transmissions of medical knowledge through folkloric methods.