Medical Identities in Global History

Radcliffe Humanities, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

18–19 June 2020

Approaches to Global history often attempt to address the role of nation-states in the construction of historical narratives, while deconstructing the Eurocentric assumptions in the expression of history. Historians have now moved away from understanding history in terms of binaries and have accepted that transfer, spread, diffusion, and understanding of knowledge is multi-directional. In the history of medicine, these translations often involve the generation, negotiation, and interaction of identities.

This conference seeks to bring together postgraduate students, early-career researchers, and scholars in history for a conference on the topic of medical identities in the past.

Medical identities are grounded in the interactions between self, body, and health, with the social, political, cultural, and intellectual context of medical knowledge. Interrogations of these relationships reveal important narratives of identity creation and complex webs of power relations.

In addition to panel presentations from a selection of speakers, this conference will host three engagement conversations: One focused on building collaborative networks amongst participants, one on public-outreach, and one round-table discussion for Early Career Researchers.

Interdisciplinary focus is encouraged. Submissions can focus on the following themes:

• Embodiment and experience of health, disease, or medical identities broadly

• Intellectual and medical power connected with processes of imperialism / colonialism / territorial expansion and commercial gains in global markets

• Indigeneity, ethnicity, and nationality

• Hygienic modernity, medical education, hospital cultures

• Movement and immigration, oceanic and territorial space

• Material Culture – Objects – objects in migration

The conference is not exclusive in theme and welcomes submissions which reflect a diversity of approaches to the concept of medical identity. Proposals with a clear application to public outreach or interdisciplinary collaboration are especially welcomed. This conference may be able to provide small travel grants for up to two postgraduate students, at the value of £150.00. Please mention in your email if you would like to be considered for one. We welcome proposals for 20-minute paper presentations. Abstracts should be maximum 250 words, alongside a short biographical description not exceeding 100 words. Paper proposals and descriptions should be emailed to medical.identities@history.ox.ac.uk by January 30, 2019.

CSHPS Annual Conference

London, Ontario

30 May – 1 June 2020

The Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science (CSHPS) is holding its annual conference as part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in London, Ontario: www.yorku.ca/cshps1/meeting.html

The Program Committee invites scholars working on the history and philosophy of science to submit abstracts for individual papers or proposals for sessions (typically 3 papers). We particularly encourage scholars to engage with the theme for Congress 2020—’Bridging Divides: Confronting Colonialism and Anti-Black Racism’. Unrelated topics and themes are also welcome.

Meeting languages: The CSHPS is a bilingual society. Individual papers may be given in English or French, but efforts to broaden participation are appreciated (e.g. a presentation in English could be accompanied by a PowerPoint in French, and vice versa). Similarly, sessions can be presented in either English or French, but bilingual sessions are especially welcomed.

Information about registration and accommodation will be available at the CFHSS congress website: http://congress2020.ca

Contact email: program.cshps@gmail.com

Scottish Society of the History of Medicine Conference

This two day symposium is being organised by the Scottish Society of the History of Medicine, in association with the British Society for the History of Medicine and the History Society of the Royal Society of Medicine. The aim is to explore the development of anatomy teaching from the earliest times to the present day.

Presentations will cover the ways in which anatomical knowledge has been acquired, portrayed and taught. We will examine the evolution of techniques used in the teaching of anatomy through the ages and its relevance not only to surgery and medicine, but also to art and society in general.

The programme includes keynote lectures, invited speakers and short papers. We welcome short papers from a range of perspectives including historical, social, cultural and modern innovations.

More information here.

Cultures of Intoxication: Contextualising Alcohol & Drug Use, Past & Present

Humanities Institute, University College Dublin, Ireland

7-8 February 2020

This conference will focus on the cultural meanings and contexts of alcohol and drug use, both past and present. It aims to assess how cultural norms and stereotypes around alcohol and drug use shape policies, practices, treatment and users’ experiences and behaviour. In particular, it seeks to consider how and why those of certain ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexuality and socio-economic background are deemed prone to excess while others are supposedly abstemious.

Papers on the following themes will be considered, although this list is neither prescriptive nor exhaustive:

• Defining “drinking culture” and “drug culture”
• Attempts to change drinking/drug cultures
• Ethnic, racial, gendered and socio-economic stereotypes/stigma of alcohol and drug use
• Medical/policy/public perspectives on drug and alcohol use
• Cultures of abstinence or excess
• Hidden cultures, subcultures and countercultures
• Culture-specific marketing and advertising
• Cultural representations of alcohol, drugs and their use (i.e. literature, drama, film)
• Alcohol and drugs tourism Keynote Speakers Professor Geoffrey Hunt, Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences – Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research, Aarhus University Dr Deborah Toner, School of History, Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester Abstracts of no more than 250 words, along with a short speaker bio, should be submitted to the conference organiser, Dr Alice Mauger (alice.mauger@ucd.ie) by Friday 6 December 2019. Panel submissions are also welcome.

Wellcome Exploring Research Seminar Series

At these seminars you will get the chance to hear about some of the latest projects that explore materials from our collections. Ask questions and take inspiration for your own research. Follow the link for the full programme of events.

Teaching Anatomy from Classical to Modern Times

‘Er indoors’: Domesticity and nature in home and garden. A one-day interdisciplinary conference

Date: 23 November 2019

Venue: University of Warwick

Keynote Speakers: Professor Ben Highmore (Cultural Studies, University of Sussex); Dr Lisa Taylor (Media Studies, Leeds Beckett University)

The domestic garden represents, for many, their closest and most significant contact with the natural environment. The relationship of humans with this domestic outdoor space, in which nature can be ‘controlled’ by the householder, is often very different to that with ‘wild nature’, to be found in the countryside and national parks. Domesticity and Nature in Home and Garden seeks to provide a fresh, interdisciplinary perspective on the interaction of humans with the environment by focusing on the relationship between the house and the garden across time and place, on the ways in which family life occurs in the domestic space and how it moves between the indoors and the outdoors. This conference will promote a rethink of our place in the nature that is on our doorstep.

Domesticity and Nature in Home and Garden will appeal to scholars from diverse fields who are concerned with all aspects of the relationship between the inside and the outside of the home. Every time and place has a domestic culture of the inside and the outside that can be critically examined and compared. Areas of interest will include, but will not be limited to, the lived experience of the domestic home and garden (pets, house plants, vermin, barbeques, sheds) and the role of health, gender and class in defining the boundaries of the home and garden space. The study of domesticity inside and outside can reshape understandings of health, wellbeing and the human relationship to the environment and provide new approaches to productively discuss our future domesticities in the context of combatting climate change. This work is of clear significance to the world beyond the academy. The conference will provide a platform for discussion of ways in which the public might be fruitfully engaged, and of any barriers that exist to prevent this.

Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare. Programme of Events, Semester 1, 2019-20

The ‘Madwoman’ and the Institution: Interrogating the Experience of Female Insanity in the Long Nineteenth Century

University of Leicester, 1 April 2020

This conference aims to reconfigure our understanding of the ‘madwoman’ in England’s long nineteenth century, asking key questions about the diagnosis, treatment, care and representation of women perceived as ‘insane’.  

This period saw the institutionalization of large swathes of the population, including those considered mentally ill. Simultaneously, medical advancements and increased interest in mental illness saw a specific focus on conditions often typified as ‘female’, with disorders attributed to their reproductive organs and bodies. Places of treatment and care – such as public asylums, private madhouses, workhouses or prisons – were typically patriarchal institutions, run by males, with women diagnosed and treated by male doctors. As a result, procuring information about the female experience has proved difficult.

Addressing these core developments in the history of medicine and psychiatry, this conference interrogates the female experience of incarceration, often presented as a way of dealing with ‘difficult’ women. Keeping the methodological challenges of uncovering the incarcerated female voice in mind, papers are invited from a range of critical frameworks and disciplines. The event will provide a forum in which researchers can share findings in order to deepen our understanding of women and madness. We invite proposals for 20-minute papers; some guiding research topics might include: 

• Deviance, disorder and immorality 
• Female agency within the asylum 
• Madness and race/class
• Women and the built environment 
• ‘Feminization of madness’ and understandings of mental illness 
• Cultural representations of madwomen 
• Social and familial conditions of institutionalization 
• Female versus male experiences of the institution 
• The identity of the ‘madwoman’ 

The conference will be keen to look at a range of experiences in a variety of institutions, and will encourage presentations from scholars who use a diverse plethora of sources.  

Please send a 250-word abstract and a short bio of no more than a paragraph to tmati.2020@gmail.com by the end of 17 January 2020. 

There are five bursaries available for students and early-career researchers who are members of the Society of the Social History of Medicine. For details about how to apply for a bursary please see the SSHM website: https://sshm.org/bursaries/ 

This conference has kindly been funded by the Society for the Social History of Medicine, and the Social History Society. Thanks go to both organisations.

Follow the event on Twitter: @TMATIConf2020 #MWC20