An interdisciplinary conference examining disability across medieval, early modern, and eighteenth century literature. UCSB Early Modern Center This event has in-person and virtual attendance. This interdisciplinary conference brings together scholars studying a variety “body matters,” including representations of disability or ability in premodern literature, the continuum of embodiment explored by premodern authors, and the relation…
March 7, 2024 – Sasha PFAU (Hendrix College, Arkansas, USA) – Traumatic Repercussions: Warfare and Disability in the French Countryside. In four letters of remission from 1424, some residents of a town in the diocese of Bayeux explained to the English government of France how they had banded together to attack two English men in…
In popular culture, autism is frequently visualised as a maze. The maze represents confusion, detachment and fear, and there is often a monster within it. Sometimes the Minotaur in the maze is the autistic person, monstrously part-human, unable to communicate, cut off from family and community. Sometimes Autism itself is the monster, stalking its prey…
This paper uses a collection of highly unusual letters from the Elizabethan State Papers, whose authors are described as ‘crazy’, ‘distracted’, and ‘insane’, to explore the epistolary construction and expression of mental and emotional distress in late-sixteenth-century England. It begins by reflecting briefly on the tricky methodological problems inherent in such an enterprise: the uncertain…
This talk will be live-streamed globally, and archived on NLM's YouTube Channel and NIH VideoCasting. Join Dr. Rachael Gillibrand as she explores the connections between eye impairments and the creation of eyeglasses, using the collections of the National Library of Medicine (NLM). The talk will highlight items from her 'ocular impairment' resource collection, accessible through…
