Conferences
Calls for Papers
Past Conferences
IMC Leeds 2024
From epidemics and famine to barber surgeons and midwives, healing during the Middle Ages represented the ultimate response to social and personal crises. While the medieval medical experience was often a tale of hardship and loss, historians of medicine continue to demonstrate that healing knowledge and practice in this period also revealed remarkable resilience, practicality, and innovation. In these sessions, Medica hopes to explore how society and individuals coped with health crises and the healing interventions that resulted from these events.
Tuesday, 2 July (11:15-12:45 GMT)
Session: 635
Location: 1.01 (Esther Simpson Building)
Exploring Medieval Health Crises, I: Author in Crisis
This session will explore instances when the author experiences their own crisis in writing.
Moderator: Nichola Harris (Department of Social Science, History & Education, State University of New York, Ulster)
Tig Lang (Independent Scholar): 'Tales of the Unexpected': The Medieval Surgeon Deals with Emergencies
Ginger Smoak (Honors College, University of Utah): The Thin Line between Child Birth/Death: The Crises of Fetal and Maternal Death in Medieval Midwifery
Lauren Cole (Department of History, Northwestern University): Personal Crises and the Production of Medical Knowledge: Hildegard of Bingen's Physica
Tuesday, 2 July (14:15-15:45 GMT)
Session: 735
Location: 1.01 (Esther Simpson Building)
Exploring Medieval Health Crises, II: Materia Medica
Session II will explore what remains from healing, from texts to prostheses.
Moderator: Winston Black (St Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia)
Alba Lara Granero (Department of Hispanic Studies, Brown University): Crisis of the Senses: Synesthetic Healing and Health Discourses in Isabel de Villena's Vita Christi
Nichola Harris (Department of Social Science, History & Education, State University of New York, Ulster): Mineral materia medica: Sources and Methods of the Lapidary Trade in Medieval and Early Modern England
Tuesday, 2 July (16:30-18:00 GMT)
Session: 835
Location: 1.01 (Esther Simpson Building)
Exploring Medieval Health Crises, III: Framing Shifts in Knowledge
This final session will explore both shifts in contemporary and modern understandings of healing.
Moderator: Ginger Smoak (Honors College, University of Utah)
Quinty Uitman (Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds): 'Tis but a flesh wound': Exploring the Appearance and Function of the Wound Man in Late Medieval Medicine
Winston Black (St Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia): Herbals, Heresy, and Humanism: 15th-Century Reinventions of Macer Floridus
Naama Cohen-Hanegbi (Department of History, Tel Aviv University): Care of Postpartum Mental Crisis in the Later Middle Ages
Tuesday, 2 July (20:00-21:00 GMT)
Session: 935
Location: 1.01 (Esther Simpson Building)
Exploring Medieval Health Crises, IV: A Roundtable Discussion
Moderator: Nichola Harris (Department of Social Science, History & Education, State University of New York, Ulster)
Participants: Ginger Smoak (Honors College, University of Utah), Winston Black (St Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia), Lauren Cole (Department of History, Northwestern University), Naama Cohen-Hanegbi (Department of History, Tel Aviv University), Alba Lara Granero (Department of Hispanic Studies, Brown University), Quinty Uitman (Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds)
IMCS Kalamazoo 2024
Inspired by and in remembrance of Rudolph Bell (Holy Anorexia, How to Do It), who passed away in 2022, these panels seek to honor his legacy by exploring the role of healing and traditional knowledge in relation to sex in the Middle Ages. In particular, in how people experienced fertility issues, impotence, pregnancy, as well as postpartum care.
Thursday, 9 May (12:00-13:00 EST)
Medica Business Meeting
ID: 5448
Join us for our annual meeting at Kalamazoo. If you have questions, please feel free to email us: medievalmedica@gmail.com
Saturday, 11 May (13:30-15:00 EST) [Hybrid]
ID: 5183
Location: Sangren 2710
I Want to Sex (Ed) You Up (1): From Conception to Postpartum
How to conceive, carry, and birth a baby was not just the concern of midwives and hopeful parents, but also practitioners. This panel seeks to explore all the elements, including miscarriage and abortion, tied up with the consequences of sex.
Moderator: Nichola Harris (Department of Social Science, History & Education, State University of New York, Ulster)
Ginger Smoak (Honors College, University of Utah): The Role of Food in Medieval Conception, Pregnancy, and Childbirth
Anne C. Leone (Syracuse University): Consequences of Sex in Late Medieval Italy
Minji Lee (Montclair State University): Mouth and the Mouth of the Womb: How to Deliver in Hildegard of Bingen's Vision
Saturday, 11 May (15:30-17:00 EST) [In Person]
Location: Sangren 2110
ID: 5186
I Want to Sex (Ed) You Up (2): From Infection to Impotence
This panel will explore the risks of ‘doing it,’ ranging from charms for impotence to pharmaceutical remedies for sexually transmitted diseases, this session will explore sexual health, knowledge, and healing.
Moderator: Dianne Burke Moneypenny (Indiana University East)
Courtney A. Krolikoski (Jacksonville University): “She get it from her mama”: Sex, Gender, and the Transmission of Leprosy
Iona Lister (University of Toronto): Nocturnal Omissions: Friar Henry Daniel on Sex and Disease
Nichola Harris (Department of Social Science, History & Education, State University of New York, Ulster): From the Battlefield to the Bedroom: Lapidary Aids for Medieval Masculinity
IMC Leeds 2023
Monday, 3 July (19:00-20:00 GMT)
Session: 437
Networks of Non-Traditional Healing and Knowledge: A Round Table Discussion
Acknowledging that the study of pre-modern medicine has often focused on orthodox knowledge and formal networks of communication, this round table discussion seeks to focus on informal networks of care and methods of healing not traditionally included in studies of medieval and early modern health and healing.
Participants: Nichola Harris (State University of New York, Ulster), Fiona Lillian Knight (University of Cambridge), and Joshua Rice (Royal Holloway, University of London).
Moderator: Anna M. Peterson (Universidad de Cantabria)
Wednesday, 5 July (11:15-12:45 GMT)
Session: 1128
Networks of Non-Traditional Healing and Knowledge
Moderator: Nichola Harris (Department of Social Science, History & Education, State University of New York, Ulster)
Kristin Uscinski (School of Humanities, State University of New York, Purchase): Ending with a Period: Recipes to Stop Menstruation in Medieval England
Fiona Lillian Knight (Faculty of History, University of Cambridge): Affectively Charged Illustration in the Works of John Arderne
Joshua Rice (Department of History, Royal Holloway, University of London): Heretical Healers: Networks of Heretical Medical Practitioners in Thirteenth-Century Southern France
Elke Krotz (Institut für Germanistik, Universität Wien): The Networks around Anna of Hohenlohe