Call for contribution for an Essay Collection to be submitted with Brill, for the Book Series Narratives and Mental Health

CfP for an Essay Collection to be submitted with Brill, for the Book Series Narratives and Mental Health

The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and its Literary Transformations: Middle Ages to the Present

Ed. Katrin Röder & Cornelia Wächter

This volume explores the history of English, American and Anglophone literary representations of mental distress and its medical investigation and treatment as significant parts of the cultural heritage of psychiatry since the Middle Ages. In line with Aleida Assmann’s approach, the volume perceives cultural heritage as ‘that part of the material and immaterial cultural memory that has been selected and destined for active transfer and circulation’ (2020, 9, transl. K.R.). The Cultural Heritage of Psychiatry and its Literary Transformations: Middle Ages to the Present (working title)approaches the cultural heritage of psychiatry as a complicated gift that connects the past to the present and the future. Like all forms of cultural heritage and functional memory, the cultural heritage of psychiatry calls for a responsible use of its components, for their preservation and protection against damage and suppression as well as for perpetual transformation, renewal and change (Assmann: 2013, 330; Assmann 2020, 9).

The cultural heritage of psychiatry is often regarded as problematic, difficult and burdensome, not least because of the long history of medicalization, institutionalized confinement, constraint and abuse of ‘patients’/users (Foucault 1988; Showalter 1985; Reaume 2010; Lewis 2010; Punzi 2019, 243-244, 248-249; Punzi/Röder 2019, 197-201). While all cultural heritage is selective and incomplete (Assmann 2008, 106), the fragmentariness of the heritage of psychiatry is to a considerable degree the result of processes of social, political and rhetorical exclusion, that is, of the silencing, suppression, stigmatization, moral condemnation and invalidation of ‘patients”/’users’ voices/self-presentations in different periods of cultural and intellectual history (Foucault 1988, passim; Showalter 1985, passim; Punzi 2019; Guest Pryal 2010, 479-480).

In this context, literature is assigned a preeminent role as ‘the mnemonic art par excellence’ (Lachmann 2008, 301). As a reintegrative interdiscourse, it simultaneously creates and observes memory, representing a ‘body of commemorative actions that include the knowledge stored by a culture, and virtually all texts a culture has produced and by which a culture is constituted’ (ibid.; Erll 2008, 391). Hence, practices of writing, reading and creative appropriation revolving around the topics of mental distress/madness and forms of treatment performatively construct the cultural memory and cultural heritage of psychiatry. They interact with extant cultural texts in diverse ways, e.g. through convergence, divergence, interrogation, assimilation or repulsion (Lachmann 2008, 301; Neumann 2008, 334, 337-338; Paris 2017). In these interactions, intertextuality plays a central role because it ‘demonstrates the process by which a culture […] continually rewrites and retranscribes itself […]’ (Lachmann 2008, 301).

The planned volume will explore how literary texts shape the cultural memory and heritage of psychiatry, how they interact with dominant and alternative forms and traditions of treatment and care and how they bear witness to and fragmentarily retrieve/imagine suppressed, medicalized voices, thereby producing counter-cultural memories (Saunders 2008, 327). By investigating the interdependence and complex interaction between literary and non-literary texts in their historical and cultural contexts, the anthology will emphasize the close connection between history and cultural heritage that was often either neglected or questioned in the past (Assmann 2020, 10).

By integrating the perspective of critical heritage studies, this volume will interrogate collective forms of cultural identity and literary canon formation with regard to what is forgotten, rejected and excluded (Assmann 2020, 10). It perceives the cultural heritage of psychiatry as a dynamic, globalized, dissonant processthat is relative to as well as formative of changing and fragmentary systems of value and significance (Wells 2017).

Although there is a comprehensive body of recent and prevailing book-length studies about the relationship between English, American and Anglophone literature, psychiatric discourse and conceptions of madness/mental distress in specific periods, genres and historical and cultural contexts (e. g. Rogers 2019; Crawford 2019; Gaedtke 2017; Whitehead 2017; Stanback 2016; Iseli 2015; Dickson/Ingram 2012; Ingram/Sim/Lawlor et al. 2011; Sedlmayr 2011; Veit-Wild 2006; Neely 2004; Lange 1997; Ziolkowski 1990), investigations of the practices of remembering the cultural heritage of psychiatry in relation to historical changes in the representation of mental distress and its treatment remain a desideratum. This volume seeks to provide central insights into these topics.

We invite chapters (each with a length of ca. 7000 words) exploring the following questions:

  • How do literary texts from different periods of literary history interact with the history and cultural heritage of psychiatry and with the cultural representations of mental distress in their specific historical moments (e.g. through intertextuality, imaginative appropriation …)?
  • How do they bear witness to, negotiate, criticize, challenge, imaginatively re-configurate, transform and re-invent this heritage?
  • How do literary texts problematize the relationship between memory, heritage, forgetting, fragmentation and suppression?
  • How do they represent the heritage of psychiatry and the cultural imaginary of mental distress in ways that make this heritage relevant for their historical present and their envisaged future?

Each chapter should start with a concise overview of concepts and discourses of mental distress/madness and the heritage of psychiatry in the respective periods of literary/cultural history. Thereafter, they should provide an analysis of selected literary texts (one or more, any genre) with regard to their techniques of representing and remembering conceptions of mental distress/madness and psychiatric treatment in their respective historical present and in reciprocal intertextual connections with their respective historical past (and perhaps their respective envisaged future). Whenever possible, discussions of intersectional relationships between concepts of mental distress/madness, psychiatric treatment and gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race and migrant identities should be included.

Please send your abstract (500-600 words) until 1 September 2020 to kroeder@uni-potsdam.de or cornelia.waechter@rub.de

 

More infos on H-Net

 

Bibliography (secondary literature)

Assmann, Aleida. ‘Zur Mediengeschichte des kulturellen Gedächtnisses’. Medien des kollektiven Gedächtnisses. Ed. A. Erll. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004, 45-61.

―: Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Arts of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

―: ‘Vom Wert der Erinnerung. Gedanken von Aleida Assmann zum Kulturellen Erbe’. Wissen – Bildung – Gemeinschaft. Magazin. Was Wir Weitergeben: Unsere Werte in der Welt von Morgen 01.20 (2020): 8-11. 9 Januar 2020. Web. https://issuu.com/wbg-wissenverbindet/docs/wbg-magazin_2020_01.pdf

Baker, Charley: Madness in Post-1945 British and American Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Camus, Marianne: Gender and Madness in the Novels of Charles Dickens. Lewiston, NY: Mellen Press, 2004.

Crawford, Joseph: Inspiration and Insanity in British Poetry 1825 – 1855. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Dickson, Leigh Wetherall, and Allan Ingram: Depression and Melancholy, 1660-1800. 4 vols. London & New York: Routledge, 2012.

Erll, Astrid: ‘Literature, Film, and the Mediality of Cultural Memory’. Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Ed. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2008, 389-398.

Erll, Astrid: Kollektives Gedächtnis und Erinnerungskulturen: Eine Einführung. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2017.

Feder, Lillian: Madness in Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Foucault, Michel: Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Vintage, 1988.

Gaedtke, Andrew: Modernism and the Machinery of Madness: Psychosis, Technology, and Narrative Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Graham, Peter W.: Psychiatry and Literature. Germantown, NY: Periodicals Service Company, 2005.

Guest Pryal, Katie Rose (2010): “The Genre of the Mood Memoir and the Ethos of Psychiatric Disability”. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 40.5 (2010): 479-501.

Gymnich, Marion: Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre; Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights. Stuttgart: Klett, 2007.

Hauser, Robert: ‘Der Modus der kulturellen Überlieferung in der digitalen Ära – zur Zukunft der Wissensgesellschaft’, Neues Erbe: Aspekte, Perspektiven und Konsequenzen der digitalen Überlieferung. Hrsg. Caroline Y. Robertson-von Trotha, Robert Hauser. Karlsruhe: KIT 2011, 15-38.

Hawes, Clement: Mania and Literary Style: The Rhetoric of Enthusiasm from the Ranters to Christopher Smart. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Ingram, Allan: The Madhouse of Language: Writing and Reading Madness in the 18th Century. London & New York: Routledge, 1991.

Ingram, Allan (ed.): Voices of Madness: Four Pamphlets, 1683-1796. Phoenix Mill et al.: Sutton,1997.

Ingram, Allan: Patterns of Madness in the Eighteenth Century: A Reader. Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1998.

Ingram, Allan, and Michelle Faubert: Cultural Constructions of Madness in Eighteenth Century Writing: Representing the Insane. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Ingram, Allen, Stuart Sim, Clark Lawlor et al.: Melancholy Experience in Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century: Before Depression, 1660 – 1800. Basingstoke, Hampshire et al.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Iseli, Markus: Thomas DeQuincey and the Cognitive Unconscious. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Kaplan, Bert (ed.): The Inner World of Mental Illness. New York: Harper and Row 1964.

Kilian, Eveline: ‘Diskursanalyse’. Literaturwissenschaft in Theorie und Praxis. Tübingen: Narr, 2004, 61-81.

Kwast-Greff, Chantal: Distorted Bodies and Suffering Souls: Women in Australian Fiction, 1984-1994 (Editions Rodopi B.V.; 2013).

Lachmann, Renate: ‘Mnemonic and Intertextual Aspects of Literature’. Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Ed. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2008, 301-310.

Lange, Robert J. G.: Gender Identity and Madness in the Nineteenth-Century Novel. Lewiston, NY [u.a.]: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998.

LeFrançois, Brenda E., Robert Menzies, and Geoffrey Reaume(eds.): Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 2013.

Lewis, Bradley: ‘A Mad Fight: Psychiatry and Disability Activism,’ The Disability Studies Reader. Ed. Lennard J. Davis. London & New York: Routledge, 2010, 160-178.

Link, Jürgen: Elementare Literatur und Generative Diskursanalyse. München: Fink, 1983.

Logan, Peter Melville: Nerves and Narratives: A Cultural History of Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century British Prose. Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1997.

Macnaughton, Jane, and Corinne Saunders (eds.): Madness and Creativity in Literature and Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

McCann, Daniel: Fear in the Medical and Literary Imagination: Medieval to Modern. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Mills, China, and Suman Fernando (eds.): ‘Globalising Mental Health or Pathologising the Global South? Mapping the Ethics, Theory and Practice of Global Mental Health’. Special Issue. Disability and the Global South 1.2 (2014).

Neely, Carol Thomas: Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Shakespeare and Early Modern Culture. Ithaca, NY, et al.: Cornell University Press, 2004.

Neumann, Birgit: ‘The Literary Representation of Memory’. Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Ed. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2008, 333-343.

Paris, Andreea: ‘Literature as Memory and Literary Memories: From Cultural Memory to Reader-Response Criticism’. Literature and Cultural Memory. Ed. Mihaela Irimia, Andreea Paris und Dragoş Manea. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2017, 95-106.

Pedlar, Valerie: The Most Dreadful Visitation: Male Madness in Victorian Fiction. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2006.  

Punzi, Elisabeth: ‘Ghost Walks or Thoughtful Remembrance: How Should the Heritage of Psychiatry be Approached?’ The Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy 19.4 (2019): 242-251.

Punzi, Elisabeth, and Katrin Röder: ‘Challenging Complicity with Mentalism: Mental Distress Memoirs and Performance Art’. Complicity and the Politics of Representation. Ed. Cornelia Wächter and Robert Wirth. London & New York: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2019, 195-216.

Reaume, Geoffrey: ‘Psychiatric Patients-Built Wall Tours at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Toronto, 2000–2010’. Left History 15: 129–148

―: Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870 – 1940. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Rogers, Kathleen Beres: Creating Romantic Obsession. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Saunders, Max: ‘Life-Writing, Cultural Memory, and Literary Studies’. Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Ed. Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter, 2008, 321-331.

Sedlmayr, Gerold: The Discourse of Madness in Britain, 1790-1815: Medicine, Politics, Literature. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2011.

Senaha, Eijun: Sex, Drugs, and Madness in Poetry from William Blake to Christina Rossetti: Women’s Pain, Women’s Pleasure. Lewiston et al.: Mellen, 1996.

Showalter, Elaine: The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830 – 1980. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.

Stanback, Emily B.: The Wordsworth-Coleridge Circle and the Aesthetics of Disability. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Tambling, Jeremy: Blake’s Night Thoughts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Tauchert, Ashley: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Accent of the Feminine. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Veit-Wild, Flora: Writing Madness: Borderlines of the Body in African Literature. Oxford: Currey, 2006.

Wells, Jeremy: ‘What is Critical Heritage Studies and how does it incorporate the discipline of history?’ 28 June 2917. Web. https://heritagestudies.org/index.php/2017/06/28/what-is-critical-heritage-studies-and-how-does-it-incorporate-the-discipline-of-history/

Whitehead, James: Madness and the Romantic Poet: A Critical History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Winkler, Amanda Eubanks: O Let Us Howle Some Heavy Note: Music for Witches, the Melancholic and the Mad on the Seventeenth-Century English Stage. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

Wood, Mary Elene: Life Writing and Schizophrenia: Encounters at the Edge of Meaning. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V.; 2013.

Ziolkowski, Theodore: German Romanticism and Its Institutions. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.

 

Surveys

The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health, edited by. Greg Eghigian (London & New York: Routledge,2017).

Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies. Ed. Nick Watson, Simo Vehmas. 2nd ed. (London & New York: Routledge, 2019).

Routledge International Handbook of Critical Mental Health, edited by Bruce M.Z. Cohen (London & New York: Routledge, 2019).

A Cultural History of Disability in the Renaissance, edited by Susan Anderson and Liam Haydon (London, Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2020).

A Cultural History of Disability in the Long Eighteenth Century, edited by D. Christopher Gabbard and Susannah B. Mintz (London, Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2020).

A Cultural History of Disability in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Joyce Huff and Martha Stoddard Holmes (London, Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2020).

A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age, edited by David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder (London & Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2020).

A Mad People’s History of Madness, edited by Dale Peterson (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1982).

Madness: A Brief History, edited by Roy Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Mental Illness in Ancient Medicine. From Celsus to Paul of Aegina – by Chiara Thumiger and P. N. Singer

Mental Illness in Ancient Medicine. From Celsus to Paul of Aegina

By Chiara Thumiger and P. N. Singer

publication Brill 2018

 

Summary from the publisher :

In Mental Illness in Ancient Medicine: From Celsus to Paul of Aegina a detailed account is given, by a range of experts in the field, of the development of different conceptualizations of the mind and its pathology by medical authors from the beginning of the imperial period to the seventh century CE. New analysis is offered, both of the dominant texts of Galen and of such important but neglected figures as Rufus, Archigenes, Athenaeus of Attalia, Aretaeus, Caelius Aurelianus and the Byzantine ‘compilers’. The work of these authors is considered both in its medical-historical context and in relation to philosophical and theological debates – on ethics and on the nature of the soul – with which they interacted.

 

More on the publisher website.

New book – Intellectual disability. A conceptual history, 1200–1900, Edited by Dr Patrick McDonagh, C. F. Goodey and Timothy Stainton

Intellectual disability. A conceptual history, 1200–1900
Edited by Dr Patrick McDonagh, C. F. Goodey and Timothy Stainton
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Format: Hardcover
This collection explores the historical origins of our modern concepts of intellectual or learning disability. The essays, from some of the leading historians of ideas of intellectual disability, focus on British and European material from the Middle Ages to the late-nineteenth century and extend across legal, educational, literary, religious, philosophical and psychiatric histories. They investigate how precursor concepts and discourses were shaped by and interacted with their particular social, cultural and intellectual environments, eventually giving rise to contemporary ideas. The collection is essential reading for scholars interested in the history of intelligence, intellectual disability and related concepts, as well as in disability history generally.
Published Date: January 2018
Pages: 296
ISBN: 978-1-5261-2531-6

CONTENTS

1 Introduction: the emergent critical history of intellectual disability – Patrick McDonagh, C. F. Goodey, and Tim Stainton
2 Conceptualization of intellectual disability in medieval English law – Wendy J. Turner
3 ‘Will-nots’ and ‘Cannots’: tracing a trope in medieval thought – Irina Metzler
4 ‘Some have it from birth, some by disposition’: foolishness in medieval German literature – Janina Dillig
5 Exclusion from the eucharist: the seventeenth-century church and the creation of ‘intellectually’ disabled people – C. F. Goodey
6 ‘A defect in the mind’: cognitive ableism in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels – D. Christopher Gabbard
7 The age of sensationalism and the construction of intellectual disability – Tim Stainton
8 Peter the ‘wild boy’: what Peter means to us – Katie Branch, Clemma Fleat, Nicola Grove, Tim Lumley Smith, and Robin Meader
9 ‘Belief’, ‘opinion’, and ‘knowledge’: the idiot in law in the the long eighteenth century – Simon Jarrett
10 Idiocy and the conceptual economy of madness – Murray K. Simpson
11 Visiting Earlswood: the asylum travelogue and the shaping of ‘idiocy’ – Patrick McDonagh
Select bibliography
Index

More infos on the editor website

CFP – IMC Leeds 2018 – Panel on Memory & Mental Health organised by Amsterdam University Press

Call for Papers — Leeds IMC, 2-5 July 2018 – Panel on Memory & Mental Health
Sponsor: Amsterdam University

Press Organizer: Tyler Clohertv,

Many medieval records in both medicine and law record individuals as “unfit” or “unhealthy” because of a lack of a good memory, often non bonam memoriam or some variation thereon. This panel seeks to address what exactly that phrase meant, how it might impair the person, and what implications it might hold in terms of health, wealth, legal standing, and/or inheritance. We seek papers on both historic persons and concepts as well as literary papers that might have characters that also reflect this dynamic. All fields of medieval history (roughly from 400-1600) are welcome.

Contact: Tyler Cloherty, t.cloherty@aup.n1 Due: September 15th Include: Name, Title (with a sentence or two explanation), affiliation, address, phone, email, and please indicate whether you are a student or a faculty member.

This session is sponsored by the AUP series: Premodern Health, Disease, and Disability

Colloquium – Must see panels at IMCL – 3-6 July 2017 – ‘Otherness’

Colloquium – Must see panels at IMCL – 3-6 July 2017 – on ‘Otherness’

Please, feel free to contact us if you are giving a speech on something close to disability history that we miss.

Session 1018
Title Exceptionally Healthy?: Exploring Disease, Disfigurement, and Disability as the Norm in Medieval Culture
Date/Time Wednesday 5 July 2017: 09.00-10.30
Sponsor Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University / Wellcome ‘Effaced’ Project, Swansea University
Organiser Patricia E. Skinner, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University
Moderator/Chair Elma Brenner, Wellcome Library, London
Paper 1018-a Epilepsy and Otherness: The Prophet and His Detractors
(Language: English)
Hillary Burgardt, Department of Classics, Ancient History & Egyptology, Swansea University
Index Terms: Medicine; Rhetoric; Sermons and Preaching; Social History
Paper 1018-b ‘Normality’ and the ‘Other’ at the End of the World: Sickness and Disability in the Passio Olavi
(Language: English)
Karl Christian Alvestad, Department of History, University of Winchester
Index Terms: Medicine; Religious Life; Social History
Paper 1018-c Looking Strange: A Positive Asset?
(Language: English)
Patricia E. Skinner, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University
Index Terms: Medicine; Religious Life; Social History
Abstract Engaging with the problematic category ‘others’, this sessions takes as its starting point the sheer ubiquity of sick, disfigured and disabled persons in medieval narrative and legal texts, and ask whether it is tenable to propose good health as a ‘normal’ human state between 500 and 1500CE. The panellists take a queer view that challenges the paradigmatic position of those who were sick, disfigured or incapacitated as excluded or ‘on the margins’, and instead illustrates the necessity of inclusion of these groups in discourses of power and piety.
Session 1110
Title ‘For I am a woman, ignorant, weak, and frail’: Feminising Death and Disease in the Later Middle Ages
Date/Time Wednesday 5 July 2017: 11.15-12.45
Organiser Victoria Baker, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Rachael Gillibrand, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Moderator/Chair Rachael Gillibrand, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Paper 1110-a Death and the Maiden: Exploring the Feminisation of Death
(Language: English)
Victoria Baker, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Index Terms: Daily Life; Gender Studies
Abstract Within late medieval society, to be valued was to look and behave according to the societal ‘norm’ – dependency was largely represented as a feminine trait, whereas to be independent was to be masculine. How then did medieval people respond to deviations from these gendered expectations as a result of death (or dying) and chronic diseases? This session will consider the feminisation of death and disease through an interdisciplinary lens, in order to answer questions about the perceived ‘feminine’ dependency of the marginal ‘third state’ between being fully healthy and fully sick (i.e. to be dying or diseased). It will consider the contradictory nature of disease and the female response to death and disease as elements of daily life which were (largely) out of their control; the effect of death, disability, and disease on medieval constructions of masculinity; and whether – if death and disease dehumanise the body – is it even important to consider the effect of these states on an individual’s gendered identity?
Session 1118
Title Social Exclusion: Leprosy, Madness, and Wardrobe Malfunctions
Date/Time Wednesday 5 July 2017: 11.15-12.45
Organiser IMC Programming Committee
Moderator/Chair Patricia E. Skinner, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University
Paper 1118-a The Transitory Convention of Madness in Arthurian Literature
(Language: English)
Erwann Hollevoet, Faculteit Letteren, KU Leuven / Group for Early Modern Studies, Universiteit Gent
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Middle English; Medicine; Philosophy; Social History
Paper 1118-b Clothing as a Means of Exclusion in Wolfram’s Parzival
(Language: English)
Alissa Theiss, Institut für Deutsche Philologie des Mittelalters, Philipps-Universität Marburg
Index Terms: Daily Life; Gender Studies; Language and Literature – German; Mentalities
Paper 1118-c ‘…with fleschelie lust sa maculait…’: Leprosy as Otherness in R. Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid
(Language: English)
Maria Luisa Maggioni, Dipartimento di Scienze linguistiche e letterature straniere, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Middle English; Religious Life
Abstract Paper -a:
When Jacques Derrida in Cogito and the History of Madness denounced Michel Foucault’s project of providing the madman with a voice as the ‘greatest merit but also the very infeasibility of his book’ on the basis of its reliance on the reason-dominated language of philosophical tradition, he could have irrevocably silenced those madmen that have been exclusionary prohibited from participating within our constitutively reasonable society. However, there are other types of language that escape the constitutive dominance of reason and periods of history that preclude the exclusion of madness by reason and thus allow the true voice of madness to be heard. The voice of madness is not merely awakened in Arthurian literature; it also reveals the performative construction of medieval identificatory categories, as madness functions as a transitory literary convention within the construction of Arthurian knightly identity.

Paper -b:
In Wolfram of Eschenbach’s Parzival the young and naive Parzival sets forth for fame and fortune wearing a fool’s dress made by his mother. His clothing mirrors his manners. Due to Parzival’s foolish behaviour Lady Jeschute is being punished and humiliated without cause by her husband. She is no longer allowed to change her clothes. Parzival’s dress and Jeschute’s torn clothing are tantamount to a divestiture. The actions of Parzival, dressed up like a villain, lead to Jeschute becoming an outlaw herself. Lacking appropriate clothing she cannot take part in courtly society any longer. When eventually Parzival is able to prove her innocence, Jeschute’s re-entry into society is marked by being cloaked with her husband’s surcoat.

Paper -c:
‘Mass illnesses – from syphilis to cholera, from the Black Death to leprosy – have been linked to otherness both historically and cross-culturally’ (Yardley, 2013). In R. Henryson’s poem The Testament of Cresseid (mid-15th century) the protagonist’s punishment for her blasphemy is leprosy. This makes her a symbol for sexually transmitted diseases (in accordance with medieval belief) and for the persecuted and marginalized victim. The dramatic physical changes Cressida undergoes, which mark the beginning of her conversion, also cause her estrangement from her previous life. In order to highlight the connotative value of the vocabulary chosen by the Henryson, this study focuses on the linguistic means chosen by the Scottish poet to describe Cressida’s downfall and her becoming ‘other’ both physically and psychologically.

 

Session 1218
Title Leprosy and Power in the High Middle Ages
Date/Time Wednesday 5 July 2017: 14.15-15.45
Sponsor Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading
Organiser Katie Phillips, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading
Moderator/Chair Elma Brenner, Wellcome Library, London
Paper 1218-a From Heinrich to Tristan: The Changing Function of Lepers in Middle High German Literature
(Language: English)
Madelon Köhler-Busch, Department of Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Platteville
Index Terms: Canon Law; Language and Literature – German; Pagan Religions; Social History
Paper 1218-b ‘The Conspicuous Patron of Lepers’?: Lepers and the King in the 12th and Early 13th Centuries
(Language: English)
Paul Webster, School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff University
Index Terms: Medicine; Politics and Diplomacy; Religious Life
Paper 1218-c Locus (in)honestus: Early Franciscan Attitudes towards the Leper Hospital
(Language: English)
Edward Sutcliffe, Department of Religion & Theology, University of Bristol
Index Terms: Ecclesiastical History; Hagiography; Religious Life
Abstract The papers in this session will explore the relationship between lepers and authority, focussing particularly on England and France in the central Middle Ages. The complex and ambiguous perceptions of the disease resulted in similarly complicated responses, both towards individuals diagnosed with leprosy, and towards groups of lepers living in dedicated leper houses. The session will explore the way in which lepers may have used their diagnosis to their advantage, and perhaps exploited their ‘Otherness’. In addition, the responses of kings and legal bodies are examined as a means of understanding contemporary reactions to leprosy.
Session 1240
Title Health and Medicine in the Early Medieval West, I: Situating Medical Texts and Practices
Date/Time Wednesday 5 July 2017: 14.15-15.45
Organiser Claire Burridge, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Zubin Mistry, School of History, Classics & Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
Moderator/Chair Claire Burridge, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Paper 1240-a The Female Patient, the Physician, and Medical Responsibility in Late Antiquity
(Language: English)
Caroline Musgrove, Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge
Index Terms: Daily Life; Gender Studies; Medicine; Women’s Studies
Paper 1240-b Teraupetica (sic) : Manuscript Context and Christian Ideology in an Early Medieval Book of Medical Recipes
(Language: English)
Arsenio Ferraces-Rodríguez, Departamento de Letras, Universidade da Coruña
Index Terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography; Medicine; Theology
Paper 1240-c ‘Mirubalanus est genus coriote nascitur in egypto’: Mapping Pharmaceutical Provenance in Early Medieval Recipe Collections
(Language: English)
Jeffrey Doolittle, Department of History, Fordham University
Index Terms: Daily Life; Medicine
Abstract Despite important new work, early medieval medicine still remains quarantined from the mainstream of early medieval historiography. The aim of these sessions is to diagnose and treat this historiographical ‘otherness’ by using health and medicine as ways of exploring early medieval societies. This first session focuses on situating medical texts, traditions and practices. Papers will use medical texts to explore a range of questions including the relationship between practical medicine and Christian ideology, gender and medical practice, the nature of learning, and connections across space and time.
Session 1319
Title Body, Soul, and Otherness, II: Religious and Medical Definitions of Mental and Physical Difference
Date/Time Wednesday 5 July 2017: 16.30-18.00
Sponsor ‘The Body in the City’ Consortium & Trivium, Tampere Centre for Classical, Medieval & Early Modern Studies, University of Tampere
Organiser Jenni Kuuliala, School of Social Sciences & Humanities, University of Tampere
Moderator/Chair Gordon Whyte, School of Philosophical, Historical & International Studies, Monash University, Victoria
Paper 1319-a Demonic Possession and the Physical, Spiritual, and Social ‘Other’
(Language: English)
Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, School of Social Sciences & Humanities, University of Tampere
Index Terms: Hagiography; Lay Piety; Medicine; Mentalities
Paper 1319-b Effacing Demons: Ritual and Medical Care in Medieval Drama
(Language: English)
Andreea-Dana Marculescu, Department of Women’s & Gender Studies, University of Oklahoma
Index Terms: Language and Literature – French or Occitan; Lay Piety; Medicine; Mentalities
Paper 1319-c Sainthood, Physical Deviance, and Otherness in the Late Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Jenni Kuuliala, School of Social Sciences & Humanities, University of Tampere
Index Terms: Hagiography; Lay Piety; Medicine; Social History
Abstract Religion and medicine were in many ways intertwined in the Middle Ages, both in explaining deviance, illness, and impairment as well as in the healing practices. Religion and medicine also offered methods, which sometimes overlapped and sometimes contradicted each other, for cure and for ways to integrate deviant people back into a community. This session analyses healing as a cultural practice; the focal questions are how religious and medical explanations intermingled in the construction of ‘the Other’, and in what ways they complemented or competed in explaining, categorising, and treating different mental and bodily conditions.
Session 1340
Title Health and Medicine in the Early Medieval West, II: Beyond Medical Texts
Date/Time Wednesday 5 July 2017: 16.30-18.00
Organiser Claire Burridge, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Zubin Mistry, School of History, Classics & Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
Moderator/Chair Richard Sowerby, School of History, Classics & Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
Paper 1340-a Incorporating Palaeopathological Evidence in the Study of Early Medieval Health and Medicine
(Language: English)
Claire Burridge, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Index Terms: Archaeology – General; Daily Life; Medicine; Technology
Paper 1340-b Soul-Searching: Some Carolingian Answers
(Language: English)
Meg Leja, History Department, Binghamton University
Index Terms: Learning (The Classical Inheritance); Medicine; Theology
Paper 1340-c ‘There are three reasons why sterilitas affects women’: Thinking about Fertility in Carolingian Monasteries
(Language: English)
Zubin Mistry, School of History, Classics & Archaeology, University of Edinburgh
Index Terms: Biblical Studies; Gender Studies; Learning (The Classical Inheritance); Medicine
Abstract Despite important new work, early medieval medicine still remains quarantined from the mainstream of early medieval historiography. The aim of these sessions is to diagnose and treat this historiographical ‘otherness’ by using health and medicine as ways of exploring early medieval societies. This second session uses medical and non-medical texts to explore ideas about body and soul as well as non-textual approaches to investigate the health of early medieval populations.
Session 1508
Title Crusading, Identity, and Otherness, I: Women, Children, and the Old
Date/Time Thursday 6 July 2017: 09.00-10.30
Sponsor Northern Network for the Study of the Crusades
Organiser Kathryn Hurlock, Department of History, Politics & Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University
Sini Kangas, School of Social Sciences & Humanities, University of Tampere
Jason T. Roche, Department of History, Politics & Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University
Moderator/Chair Jason T. Roche, Department of History, Politics & Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University
Paper 1508-a The Young and The Old – Feeble Crusaders?: Age in the 12th- and 13th-Century Sources of the Crusades
(Language: English)
Sini Kangas, School of Social Sciences & Humanities, University of Tampere
Index Terms: Crusades; Pagan Religions
Paper 1508-b Women and Children as Victims of the Baltic Crusades: A Case of ‘Ritual Violence’?
(Language: English)
Torben Kjersgaard Nielsen, Institut for Kultur og Globale Studier / Cultural Encounters in Pre-Modern Societies, Aalborg Universitet
Index Terms: Crusades; Pagan Religions
Paper 1508-c The Damascene Frontier, 1099-1128: Frankish / Turkish Conflict and Peacemaking during the Post-First Crusade Era
(Language: English)
Nicholas E. Morton, School of Arts & Humanities, Nottingham Trent University
Index Terms: Crusades; Military History
Abstract In the first of a series of linked sessions on the interrelated themes of crusading, identity, and otherness, Sini Kangas explores the understanding of youth and old age in the 12th- and 13th-century chronicles and chansons of the Crusades, showing how age is employed to shed light on specific contexts, offer additional information, and emphasise small but important details. Tørben Nielsen discusses the Christian expansion in pagan Livonia and Estonia between the years 1184 and 1227 as reported in the Chronicon Livoniae, and seeks to understand why women and children appear repeatedly in the text as the numberless and nameless victims of the crusading warfare. Nic Morton considers the Damascene frontier during the first three decades of the 12th century, and explains why the city’s ruler, Tughtakin, was reluctant to risk a direct confrontation with the newly established Frankish settlers.
Session 1625
Title Apocalyptic Alterity: Otherness and the End Times
Date/Time Thursday 6 July 2017: 11.15-12.45
Organiser Brett E. Whalen, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Moderator/Chair Felicitas Schmieder, Historisches Institut, FernUniversität Hagen
Respondent James Palmer, St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of St Andrews
Paper 1625-a Everybody Wants to Rule the World: Crusading Soldiers of Christ at the End of Time
(Language: English)
Matthew Gabriele, Department of Religion & Culture, Virginia Technical Institute
Index Terms: Crusades; Historiography – Medieval; Theology
Paper 1625-b Church, Empire, and Apocalypse in the 13th Century
(Language: English)
Brett E. Whalen, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Index Terms: Ecclesiastical History; Historiography – Medieval; Political Thought
Paper 1625-c Heavenly Hermaphrodites: Sexual Difference and the End of Time
(Language: English)
Leah DeVun, Department of History, Rutgers University, New Jersey
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Historiography – Medieval; Sexuality
Abstract Medieval Europe’s apocalyptic imagination provided a compelling field of ideas, texts, and images for Christians to project and contest the norms of their society, framed by the envisioned progress of time from its beginning to its end. This proposed panel will explore some of the ways that apocalyptic and eschatological views of salvation history informed attitudes towards the ‘self’ and ‘others’, past, present, and future, shaping religious, political, and sexual identities. The papers and commentary will also suggest some of the ways that studies of apocalypticism during the Middle Ages have changed over recent years, looking past long-standing debates and issues in the field (e.g. the year 1000, the radical nature of millennialism) to embrace new questions and problems relating to the significance of the apocalypse for medieval intellectual life, society, and spirituality.

 

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