CFP: Health and Work in the Early Modern World, 1500-1750 ca.

Deadline for submissions: 10th June
Send abstracts to: marielouise.leonard AT unive.it

Conference Dates: September 20-21, Aula Baratto, Ca’ Foscari Venice (Italy)

This conference aims to bring together scholars working on any aspect of the relationship between health and work in the early modern period. Scholarship in health and medicine has examined how people cared for their own health, looking at how patients experienced and recovered from disease, interacted with multiple medical practitioners, and altered their domestic environment to improve health. At a societal level developing public health procedures were directed at industries and jobs that could cause harm to health. Recent analyses of work in the period have used methodologies that seek to examine previously overlooked and marginalised workers. By drawing these strands together to view working lives through the lens of health in a time of technological change, advances in medical sciences, and fewer yet still devastating epidemics, the conference will explore new ways of understanding health and ill-health, perceptions of work, and the practicalities of working life in early modern society.

Ill-health is broadly conceived, encompassing chronic illness, bouts of ill-health, injury, and periods of epidemic disease.

Papers may include but are not limited to:

• Medical advice
• Preventative measure to protect workers
• Disability and work
• Environmental impact on working locations

The keynote lecture will be given by Paola Bertucci, Yale University.

Papers should be 25 minutes in length. Please send abstracts of 200 words and a brief biography. This is a hybrid event. Please indicate if you would like to attend in person or online. Bursaries are available for PhD students, early career scholars, and academics in precarious employment.