Medica at Kalamazoo 2020

We're happy to announce Medica's sessions for the 55th International Congress on Medieval Studies, which will be held in Kalamazoo, Michigan from May 7-10, 2020.


1) Healing and the Healer in Medieval Popular Culture

Laine E. Doggett, “Popular Medicine in Rutebeuf’s “Le Dit de l’herberie”: Weighing Salescraft and Healing Knowledge in Selling Remedies”

Hannah Lloyd, “‘To Your Health!’: Examining the Influence of Medical Knowledge on Fourteenth-Century English Cuisine”

Helga Ruppe, “Sir Knight, Heal Thyself; Healing Among Knights Errant in Some Early Grail Narratives”

Rachel Podd, “’She is said to be a Diviner”: Recovering Empirical Medical Practice in the Fourteenth Century Catalonian Pastoral Visitations”


2) Desire and Disease: The Medicalization of Sex in the Middle Ages

Nichola Harris, “Fertility and Faithlessness: Medieval Aphrodisiacs Repurposed as Treatments for Venereal Diseases in Early Modern England”

Minji Lee, “Sex is not the Treatment for Every Woman: Hildegard of Bingen’s Temperament Theory regarding Women’s Sexual Life”

Danijela Zutic, “Sex, holes and late medieval Regimen Sanitatis book”


3) New Ways to Teach Medieval Medicine (a roundtable)

Lee Mordechai, “The Justinianic Plague app as a resource for teaching and research”

Nükhet Varlik, “Black Death Digital Archive: A Multidisciplinary Database of the Second Plague Pandemic”

Winston Black, “Choosing and Using Medieval Medicine Primary Sources”

Lori Jones, “Imaging Medieval Medicine in the Classroom”

Lucy C. Barnhouse, “"But Did They Know What They Were Doing?" Medieval Medicine in the Undergraduate Classroom”


We are also co-sponsoring, with Beneventan Studies, a session on "Medieval Interdisciplinarity: Knowledge-Transfer in Medieval Southern Italy II: Medicine and Sciences:"

Jeffrey Doolitte,"Establishing a Space for Medicine at Montecassino: Hildemar of Corbie's Expositio of the Rule of St. Benedict (Montecassino, Arch. dell'Abbazia, Cod. 175)"

F. Eliza Glaze,  "Salerno and the Articella in the 12th Century: Problems and Prospects"

Francis Newton, "Medicine, Rhetoric, Theological Debate: Scribes and their Personal Dossiers in the Production of Aberdeen MS 106"

Finally, we'll be holding our annual business meeting at noon on Thursday and a reception on Friday evening. Please join us for both, if you're able! More details will follow closer to the event.