CFPs: Medica at Kalamazoo 2012

Call for Papers: 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, Michigan, 10-13 May 2012

1) Noble Suffering: Representations of the Experience of Pain

Sponsor: Medica: The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages

This session will examine the redemptive potential for pain and suffering as evidenced in the material and literary culture of medieval Europe. We invite proposals that investigate portrayals of both emotional and physical suffering in religious and secular art and literature. Speakers are encouraged to explore representations of redemptive pain as expressed in images, objects, and texts from a broad range of perspectives, from saint to sinner, romantic hero to base criminal.

Possible topics include:

• Images of pain in religious art and texts, such as renditions of scripture, the lives of the saints, etc.
• Representations of pain in literature, such as romance, drama, fabliaux, etc.
• Images and treatment of pain in medical texts
• Associations of pain and suffering with specific diseases, such as leprosy
• Pain and suffering in secular punishment

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a completed Participant Information Form (PIF) by e-mail to Linda Migl Keyser (keyserl@georgetown.edu) by 15 September 2011.

Additional information for applicants and the PIF are available at http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html.

2) Health and Healing in Early Medieval Medicine: Influences, Theory and Practices

Co-sponsors: Medica: the Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages and The Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe

This interdisciplinary session will explore all aspects of the health and healing in Europe and the Mediterranean world from approximately 400 to 1100 AD. We are open to all ways of measuring health and welfare from archaeology to psychology and literature. Diseases, concepts of healing, and the responses of early medieval populations to disease are of special interest.

We are seeking papers on any of the following topics:

• - All aspects of early medieval health including (mal)nutrition, child mortality, aging, health beliefs, and health practices.
• - All aspects of the Plague of Justinian and other infectious diseases
• - Bioarchaeology of early medieval populations.
• - All aspects of early medieval medical practice in art, literature, history, and archaeology.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words and the Participant Information Form should be sent to Michelle Ziegler at ZieglerM@slu.edu by September 15.

The Participant Information Form and additional information be found at http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html.