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Medica's Book Series

CFP for Kalamazoo 2022

 

Medica: The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages is seeking paper proposals for sessions to be held at the 57^th International Congress on Medieval Studies hosted by Western Michigan University's Medieval Institute. Due to continued pandemic scheduling challenges, the 57^th ICMS will be live on the internet Monday through Saturday, May 9-14, 2022. Medica aims to bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars (historians, archaeologists, art historians, literary scholars, paleopathologists, etc.) focusing on health and healing in the Middle Ages.

 

Medica seeks proposals for the following sessions:

 

1)   The ‘New Paradigm’ of Plague Studies: Expanded Geographies and Chronologies of the Medieval Pandemics

 

DESCRIPTION: 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 1^st and 2^nd 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.

 

METHOD: This panel is grounded on the fact that the history of plague (and other infectious diseases) is now being written not only by traditional historical methods (interrogation of written records), but also by scientific techniques that reconstruct the history of both the pathogens and the human beings afflicted by them. The sciences are important because they can push beyond both the geographic and chronological limits of written sources and help us reconstruct the lives and health circumstances of populations otherwise unrecorded. How many more millions of stories are yet to be told?

 

2)   The Globalization of Medieval Medicine: Ideas, Authorities, and Products 1000-1600

 

DESCRIPTION: 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.

 

METHOD: Inspired by ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Roads (Bloomsbury, 2021), this panel would offer new voices and research that would expand how we think about medieval medicine. This panel would look at the practice of medieval medicine from a global perspective, to view global exchanges of people, ideas, and products that shaped medical ideas and practices. Starting in the eleventh century via the Silk Road and through the early modern period, medieval European medical ideas, once founded on ancient authorities, was transformed by contact with people, products and ideas from outside the continent. This paper session is focused on considering ways in which scholars can study the global Middle Ages. Scholarly approaches that de-center European narratives are greatly valued.

 

3)   ROUNDTABLE: Pharmacy, Pfizer, and the Pandemic: Finding Community in Tradition and Science

 

DESCRIPTION: In December 2020, newspapers throughout the world carried images and video feeds of trucks rolling out of the Kalamazoo warehouses of the drug manufacturer, Pfizer, carrying the first doses of the recently approved COVID-19 vaccine to hospitals and distribution centers across the United States. Pfizer is a neighbor of the ICMS, and just as Western Michigan University is located on lands that have been historically occupied by the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodewadmi nations, so this roundtable takes the opportunity of the 2022 meeting to explore the traditional ties between communities and provisioners of life-saving or life-enhancing pharmaceutics.

 

METHOD: This panel continues the Medica Society’s focus on our current experience of the modern pandemic and the ways it has allowed us to reflect in new ways on the experience of the past. By coincidence, one of the key players in the vaccine interventions that turned the tide on the COVID-19 pandemic is located right in Kalamazoo: Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. The technological innovations of mRNA vaccines may seem light years removed from the natural substances. This roundtable will invite medievalist scholars and members of the Kalamazoo community that hosts the Congress every year to reflect on the material basis of healing shared the world over: the collective knowledge of substances with pharmaceutical properties, whether natural or manufactured, to provide aid and comfort. Participants will be encouraged to draw on both their expert knowledge in their fields, but also their personal experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shaped the lives of everyone the world over.

 

If interested, please submit an abstract of roughly 250-300 words along with a Participant Information Form (PIF), which can be found at http://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions. All proposal materials are due by September 15, 2021.

If you have questions about either of the sessions, or would like to submit an abstract, please direct emails to Harry York at why@pdx.edu.

 

 

 

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.

CFP for Medica sessions at ICMS in Kalamazoo 2020

Medica is seeking paper proposals for two sessions to be held at 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 

DESCRIPTION: This session seeks to explore the perceptions and understandings of health maintenance, disease prevention and treatment, medical practitioners, etc., in the practices of healers outside the university sphere in the Middle Ages. The practices of women healers, religious-based healers, practitioners of folk medicine, healing saints, and other empirically-trained doctors would be ideal topics of analysis for this session. Possible papers could examine sources like household recipe books, legal regulations of medical practice, depictions of healing in popular literature, artistic representations of healers, or similar sources.

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

DESCRIPTION: This session is open to investigations of sexuality and medicine in the Middle Ages. This might include papers on sexually transmitted diseases, sexual dysfunction, methods to increase/inhibit sexual desire, or treatments to test for or enhance fertility. Other topics could include perceptions of how emotions of desire might affect an individual’s health, or concerns for how the body shapes desire in various ways. 

If interested, please submit an abstract of roughly 250-300 words along with a Participant Information Form (PIF), which can be found at http://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions. Any graduate student who has a paper accepted will be eligible to apply for Medica's Travel Award of $100 to help expenses. All proposal materials are due by September 15, 2019. If you have questions about either of the sessions, or would like to submit an abstract, please direct emails to Harry York at why@pdx.edu.

Medica is also organizing a roundtable on teaching the history of medicine in the Middle Ages: New Ways to Teach Medieval Medicine

DESCRIPTION:  This roundtable brings together scholars who will explore new tools and methods for teaching medieval medicine. The tools and ideas presented here are intended for anyone who might wish to include a module on health and disease in a broader course on the Middle Ages, not only for those seeking to teach courses focused on medieval medicine. Some speakers will examine various new digital technologies available for use in classroom settings. Others will consider the ways in which the history of medicine might be taught in the broader context of the global Middle Ages.

Finally, we are also co-sponsoring a session with Beneventan Studies:

TITLE: Medieval Interdisciplinarity: Knowledge-Transfer in Medieval Southern Italy II: Medicine and Sciences

DESCRIPTION: The importance of Montecassino and the Beneventan Zone in the history of the transmission of the classics for the trivium has long been recognized. Only recently has the pivotal role of the Zone for the history of the collection, translation, transmission and dissemination of scientific works come to the fore. The two sessions build on new/forthcoming publications on key Southern Italian manuscript witnesses of this transfer asks how knowledge transfer (particular of works of the quadrivium and medical sciences) occurred (into, within, and from the Zone), and what was the relationship between innovative learning across the sciences. Session II focuses new scholarship on medical and scientific learning.

For more information about this session, or to submit a proposal, please contact Andrew J. M. Irving at a.j.m.irving@rug.nl.

Medica is pleased to sponsor two sessions at the 54^th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 9-12, 2019)

Leprosy in the City: Medical, Charitable, and Regulatory Responses to Leprosy in the Middle Ages

Thursday, May 9 at 1:30pm in Schneider 1120

Chiara Giancoli, “Medical, Charitable, and Regulatory Responses to Leprosy in Two of the Catholic Homilies by Ælfric of Eynsham”

Rebecca Hall, “The Impact of Cross Religious Contact on Leprosy Sufferers in the Crusader Kingdoms”

Anna M. Peterson, “‘Let these institutions be governed by prudent suitable men of good repute’: Leprosaria and Accountability in the Medieval West (ca. 1200–1342)”

Aleksandra N. Pfau, “Lepers in the Streets: Movement of Lepers in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century France”

Women Healers in Medieval Family and Community Life

Thursday, May 9 at 3:30pm in Schneider 1160

Ruth Dwyer, “Theodora and the Mystery of Justinian’s Cure, Solved”

Nichola Harris, “Hildegard’s Heterodoxy: Sources and the Application of Lapidary Knowledge in Physica “

The Medica Business Meeting will be held on Thursday, May 9, from 12:00-12:45 in Bernhard 157/158. Bring lunch and help plan future sessions.

CFP for Kalamazoo, May 9-12, 2019

Medica will be sponsoring two sessions at the 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies, which will be held in Kalamazoo, Michigan from May 9-12, 2019. 

1) Leprosy in the City: Medical, Charitable, and Regulatory Responses to Leprosy in the Middle Ages

This session invites papers that explore the multifaceted approaches and responses to leprosy and leprosy sufferers in the Middle Ages. Leprosy occupied a unique place in the medieval world and was simultaneously viewed and understood in medical, legal, social, and religious terms. Papers in this session could explore different types of approaches or responses to the disease including those of learned medical practitioners, local healers, religious figures, and the cities themselves. Papers that consider questions about medical treatments, institutions, or other related topics concerning medieval leprosy are also welcomed. 

2) Women Healers in Medieval Family and Community Life

Both historical and fictional, textual and artistic representations portray medieval women performing a customary domestic responsibility, treating illness and injury among their family and neighbors. This session seeks papers that enlarge typical characterizations by offering insight into the contributions and practices of female healers as they functioned in the day-day reality of medieval life. Not limited to midwifery, the health care activities of medieval laywomen, noblewomen, and religious women included surgery and bloodletting, therapeutic treatments, herbalism, practical nursing, and disposal of the dead. Paper proposals are invited that examine training, treatments, historical records, legal status, and individual figures, both professional and non-professional. In addition, papers are encouraged to examine the textual and empirical sources of information employed by medieval female healers, such as botanicals, late medieval self-help texts, medical texts and teaching manuals, traditional home recipe texts, native intelligence, and apprenticeships. As in the past, Medica encourages interdisciplinary perspectives that explore medieval female health care providers across the cultural spectrum of history, literature, and art.

If interested, please submit an abstract of roughly 250-300 words along with a Participant Information Form (PIF), which can be found at http://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions. All proposal materials are due by September 15, 2017.

If you have questions about either of the sessions, or would like to submit an abstract, please direct emails to Harry York at why@pdx.edu.