Call for Contributors – Early Modern European Neurodivergence August 3rd and 4th 2026, Taliesin Arts Centre, Swansea University We welcome contributions to a conference on the topic of neurodivergence and early modern Europe. This accessible, hybrid event will examine neurodivergence in the period 1550-1750, across languages and cultures, including cross-cultural encounters between Europe and other…
Application Deadline: Postdoctoral Research Associate – Early Modern European Neurodivergence
Swansea University is a research-led university that has been making a difference since 1920. The University community thrives on exploration and discovery and offers the right balance of excellent teaching and research, matched by an enviable quality of life. Our stunning waterfront campuses and multicultural community make us a desirable workplace for colleagues from around…
Demons, Imagination, and Mental Illness: Medical Disputations on “Phantasia” in Wittenberg (1593-1643)
In the latter half of the sixteenth century, and particularly in its final years, the University of Wittenberg witnessed a surge in disputations concerning ostensibly supernatural mental states, like lycanthropy, ecstasy, and witchcraft. In their analyses, contemporaries attributed such phenomena to the influence of demons, to a disorder of the imaginatio/phantasia, or a combination of…
CFP: The Senses in High Medieval to Early Modern Medicine
Stenton Symposium 2024, University of Reading Proposals of up to 200 words and a short bio are due Friday 23 August. Send to Dr. Ruth Salter (r.j.salter@reading.ac.uk)
Uncommon Bodies Symposium: Premodern Disability and Race in a Global Context
The two-day Symposium, scheduled for Feb. 15-16, 2024, is co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis) and Macalester College (St. Paul). The Symposium will bring to the Twin Cities a group of leading scholars of early modernity to illuminate the intersections of disability and race in the global early modern period. Organized by longtime collaborators…
Colloquium: “From Book to Lab: Investigating the Malleable Body in Early Modern Germany”
Heidi Hausse presents “From Book to Lab: Investigating the Malleable Body in Early Modern Germany.” In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a complex pool of practices and techniques developed to surgically remove limbs and artificially replace them. The activities of surgeons, artisans, and amputees shifted expectations about the number and degree of interventions possible. Their efforts…
Seminar: Managing Mental Health Emergencies in Early Modern England
Today, words like ‘frantic’ and ‘frenzy’ are the stuff of hyperbolic newspaper headlines. Five hundred years ago, they described someone who was judged to be suffering from an episode of severe mental illness. Among frenzy’s hallmark symptoms were sudden, uncharacteristic changes in mood and behaviour; ‘those that be frantic… rage furiously, so that they cannot…
Webinar: Experiences of War, Injury, and (Chronic) Pain (15th-16th centuries)
February 1, 2024 – Bianca FROHNE (Kiel University, Germany) – „What pain I suffered during that time, anyone can well imagine…“ Experiences of War, Injury, and (Chronic) Pain (15th-16th centuries). In this paper I will discuss (chronic) pain experiences in the later Middle Ages from disability studies and crip perspectives, focusing on pain narratives in…
CFP Deadline: Hospital material culture in the Middle and Early Modern Ages: concepts and meanings
Hospital material culture in the Middle and Early Modern Ages: concepts and meanings School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon 15-17 April 2024 The everyday life in a hospital has always been related to different objects and practices that make up the material expression of established human relationships and the very functioning of such…
Seminar: “Medical writer’s quibbles about genitourinary patients in early modern England”
8th February 2024 – Dr Jennifer Evans (University of Hertfordshire) – Registration details to follow. TITLE: ‘‘He was ashamed to let me know of it, and thought to have got cured otherwise without my knowledge’: Medical writer’s quibbles about genitourinary patients in early modern England.’ ABSTRACT: This seminar considers the extent to which disorders affecting…
