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**

“Art, Anatomy, and the Body: Vesalius 500″, NYAM's second annual Festival for Medical History and the Arts

The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Saturday, October 18, 2014
11:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

On October 18, NYAM’s Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health presents its second-annual Festival for Medical History and the Arts. “Art, Anatomy, and the Body: Vesalius 500″ will celebrate the 500th birthday of anatomist Andreas Vesalius.

Vesalius’ groundbreaking De humani corporis fabrica (The Fabric of the Human Body) of 1543 is a key Renaissance text, one that profoundly changed medical training, anatomical knowledge, and artistic representations of the body, an influence that has persisted over the centuries. Our Festival is one of a global series of celebrations of his legacy.

Our day-long event will explore the intersection of anatomy and the arts with a vibrant roster of performers and presenters, including

• Heidi Latsky’s “GIMP” Dance Project;
• the comics artists of Graphic Medicine;
• Sander Gilman on posture controlling the unruly body;
• Alice Dreger on inventing the medical photograph;
• Bill Hayes on researching hidden histories of medicine;
• Steven Assael, Ann Fox and Chun-shan (Sandie) Yi on anatomy in contemporary art;
• Chase Joynt’s Resisterectomy, a meditation on surgery and gender;
• Brandy Schillace on ambivalent depictions of female anatomy in the 18th century;
• Lisa Rosner on famous body snatchers Burke and Hare;
• the art of anatomical atlases with Michael Sappol;
• medical 3D printing demos by ProofX;
• anatomical painting directly on skin with Kriota Willberg;
• Daniel Garrison on translating Vesalius for modern audiences;
• Jeff Levine and Michael Nevins on revisiting the Fabrica frontispiece;

and many more.

In connection with the Festival, NYAM’s Center will host 4 hands-on workshops

1. From the Cradle to the Grave: Session One: The Cradle

Working with NYAM’s conservation team, produce your own articulated anatomical figures in the Gladys Brooks Book & Paper Conservation Laboratory. Participants will have time to make at least one paper baby and pelvis, which can be produced as paper dolls or magnets.

2. From the Cradle to the Grave: Session Two: The Grave

Working with NYAM’s conservation team, produce your own “exquisite corpse” in the Gladys Brooks Book & Paper Conservation Laboratory. To produce a Vesalian-themed exquisite (or rotating) corpse, this workshop will employ a special, rotating binding structure and mix-matched facsimile images from NYAM’s rare book collections to allow students to create their own unique, moveable pieces of art.

3. Renaissance Illustration Techniques Workshop with Marie Dauenheimer, Medical Illustrator

Artists and anatomists passionate about the mysteries of the human body drove anatomical investigation during the Renaissance. In this workshop, students will learn and apply the techniques used by Renaissance artists to illustrate anatomical specimens.

4. Understanding the Hand, physical anthropology workshop with Sam Dunlap, Ph.D.

Basic anatomical dissection, illustration, and knowledge continue to be fundamental in many fields from evolutionary biology to surgery, medical training, and forensic science. This workshop will offer participants the opportunity to explore the human hand and its anatomy, which will be demonstrated with at least three dissections.

Workshop registration fees cover both the workshop and all-day admission to the Festival.

For more information and to register, see http://nyamcenterforhistory.org/vesalius-500/

Paul Theerman, PhD
Associate Director
Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health
New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY, 10029
212.822.7350
http://nyamcenterforhistory.org/

CALL FOR PAPERS Ars Effectiva et Methodus: The Body in Early Modern Science and Thought

Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel, 30 June – 1 July 2014

Organised by Karin Friedrich (Aberdeen) with the support of the Herzog August Library, Wolfenbüttel, the Aberdeen Humanities Fund/Hunter Caldwell Awards and the Centre for Early Modern Studies, University of Aberdeen (Scotland)

This is a call for papers for a conference that focuses on the influence of Melanchthon’s methodus et ars on the definition and meaning of the body – both real and metaphorical and across the disciplines. It builds on a symposium on the formation of scholarly disciplines and networks spun between Scotland and Northern Europe around the Scottish polymath Duncan Liddel (1561-1613) which was held at the University of Aberdeen 8-10 May 2013. Supported by the Wellcome Trust, it initiated a research project on Liddel’s library (held in Aberdeen) and his time at the University of Helmstedt from 1595-1607.

Following Renaissance medicine’s approach, we see ars medica penetrating all innermost parts of nature and combining all disciplines, from medicine to cosmography to ethics, and employing empirical observation. Triggered first by epidemics such as the Black Death and, in the sixteenth century, the ‘French Disease’, trust in Aristotelian and Galenic medical traditions suffered a setback in favour of the rise of broadly Neo-Platonist occult concepts, reflected in the work of Paracelsus, Fracastoro, Fernel and other innovators. Alongside this shift, empirical approaches began to flourish, especially in relation to anatomy and the physical body, just as Aristotelianism began to give way to the new philosophy. In Liber de anima (1540), for example, Melanchthon insisted that knowledge of our bodies’ anatomy gave us self-knowledge about our souls and revealed God’s workmanship within us. Anatomy became a natural philosophical endeavour that could help to maintain doctrinal coherence in the church.

As Humanist scholars of medicine and related disciplines explored the possibilities of new epistemologies and methodologies, a growing European republic of letters gained significance. With a particular interest in the role of polymathic networks and their discourses, particularly Lutheran and humanist networks, we need to ask how, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, new concepts of the human body contributed to the development and differentiation of scientific disciplines in the post-medieval world, right up to what was later labelled the ‘Scientific Revolution’.

Themes for exploration are:
Bodies physical and metaphysical
Knowledge of bodies and bodies of knowledge: the development of disciplines
Teaching the Body: didactic scholarship
Heavenly bodies and down to earth: From astronomy to astrology and alchemy
The ‘Body Politic’ as an epistemological resource
‘Body of Proof’: Medicine, Method and Humanist discourses

Proposals (not longer than 350 words, or one page A4, stating the address from which you will travel) for papers addressing the themes of the conference (papers are limited to 20 minutes) are accepted in German, English or French and should be sent by 7 March (preferably via email) to:

k.friedrich@abdn.ac.uk
Professor Dr Karin Friedrich
Chair of Early Modern History
Deputy Head of School (Divinity, History and Philosophy) for History
Co-director Centre for Early Modern Studies (CEMS)

University of Aberdeen
Crombie Annexe 207
Meston Walk
Aberdeen AB24 3FX
Tel. +44- (0) 1224-272451

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/cems
k.friedrich@abdn.ac.uk