Blood, Tears, Sweat: Corporeality in Medieval and Early Modern Worlds

12 September 2015, The University of Western Australia

A public lecture by Professor Anthony Bale (Birkbeck, London) will precede the conference on the evening of 11 September 2015.

The ‘material turn’ has increasingly drawn the attention of scholars interested in the art, history, literatures, and cultures of pre-modern Europe. This one-day conference will explore aspects of embodiment and corporeality in medieval and early modern worlds, both within Europe and between European and non-European cultures. We expect the conference to focus on analysing the interactions, meanings, and symbolism of three key bodily substances: blood, sweat, and tears. Existing scholarship has laid the foundation for work on bodies and disciplines, gendered bodies, medieval and early modern anatomy, the bodies of saints, and the body of Christ, but fruitful new lines of enquiry still wait to be investigated. Papers that probe the boundaries and intersections between the cultural history of violence, medical humanities, and theories and practices of affectivity are especially welcome.

The convenors of the UWA Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies & Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group 21st Annual Conference invite proposals for twenty-minute papers or ninety-minute panels on the following themes:

• cultural exchanges and conflict, particularly their material dimensions and repercussions as meetings and mixings of bodies and bloods;
• social, theological, ethnic, and physiological definitions of bodies and bloods;
• the formation of metaphorical bodies through affective discourses and discourses of violence;
• boundaries, bodily integrity, dismemberment, and contagion;
• somatic expressions of emotion (the force of tears, sweat and blood as tangible emotion);
• intersections between medical theories and practices relating to humours and effluvia.

Submissions for individual papers should include a paper title, a c.300-word abstract, participant’s name, affiliation (if any), email address, and audio/visual requirements. Submissions for panels should include a panel title and brief description, the name and affiliation of the panel chair (if one is being provided), paper titles, 300-word abstracts, participants’ names, affiliations and contact details for individual papers within the panel, and audio/visual requirements.

Please email submissions to Dr Joanne McEwan joanne.mcewan@uwa.edu.au by 31 July 2015. **Deadline Extended**

Modified Bodies and Prosthesis in Medieval and Early Modern England

A one-day Symposium organised by the Centre for Early Modern and Medieval Studies at the University of Sussex

Tuesday 27 May 2014, Arts B, Social Space (B274)

Registration details: there is no charge for attending the symposium; lunch and coffee will be provided.

To register please email Chloe Porter (C.Porter@sussex.ac.uk) or Katie Walter (K.L.Walter@sussex.ac.uk), by Monday 12 May 2014.

The notions of prosthesis and bodily modification increasingly preoccupy contemporary critical discourse, from disability studies to David Wills’ characterisation of the body as ‘a prosthesis’. Such contemporary explorations can preclude or overlook the ‘pre’ or the ‘early’ modern; ‘prosthesis’ itself, as a term for medical or bodily (rather than grammatical) supplementation doesn’t appear until the eighteenth century. Yet a growing body of scholarship recognises both the particular ways in which medieval and early modern technologies modify the body, and the significance of notions of ‘prosthesis’ for literary interpretation and cultural analysis in these periods. This one-day symposium draws together new scholarship on bodily modification and prosthesis, from facial disfigurement and the disabled soldier’s body, to bodily practices –such as kneeling, dress, and the use of charms in healing –which may modify, or become extensions of the body. How can medieval and early modern modified bodies be contextualised in relation to philosophical and theological understandings of the natural human body and the body post-mortem? And how can these historical contexts participate in contemporary critical discourse? Through an interdisciplinary discussion, we will ask what medieval and early modern examples reveal about the historical, philosophical and (literary) theoretical possibilities of prosthesis.


Programme
10.45-11.00

Registration

11.00-12.30 Session 1
Patricia Skinner (Swansea) ‘“My broken nose made me ridiculous”: Unwanted Facial Modifications in the Middle Ages’
Helen Davies (Lancaster) ‘“Nature cannot be surpassed by art”: The Power of Prosthetics in the Body of the Soldier’
Margaret Healy (Sussex) ‘Healing Prosthetics: Word Charms, Amulets and Talismen’

12.30-1.30 Lunch

1.30-2.45 Session 2
Chloe Porter (Sussex) ‘Post-mortem Prosthesis: Modified Bodies and the Early Modern Afterlife’
Naomi Baker (Manchester) ‘“The body of this death”: Paul and Disability on the Early Modern Stage’

2.45-3.15 Coffee

3.15-4.45 Session 3
Isabel Davis (Birkbeck) ‘Kneeling’
Jenny Tiramani (School of Historical Dress) ‘The Rise and Fall of Geometry: The Development of Underpinnings in Early Modern Europe’
Katie Walter (Sussex) ‘Plasticity and Prosthesis’

4.45-5.00 Break

5.00-6.00 Session 4: Response and Round Table with Peter Boxall (Sussex)