Medica Book Series

Medica: Studies in Pre-Modern Health and Healing (Routledge) is a multi-disciplinary book series that encourages and promotes scholarship in the long history of health, healing, and medicine from the Ancient World to 1800. The series explores all aspects of pre-modern health and healing, expanding upon traditional definitions while encouraging global and comparative perspectives.

 

We invite book proposals related to pre-modern healing, broadly defined. Book projects may focus on specific geographical regions or cross boundaries to highlight shared and/or divergent healing cultures.

 

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

 

·      Dissemination and circulation of healing knowledge

·      Practitioners and the professionalization of medicine

·      Gendered health and healing

·      Recipes, pharmacology, and ethnopharmacology

·      Indigenous healing cultures

·      Informal networks of care

·      Health crises

·      Repurposing/reinterpretation of texts and healing techniques

·      Intersections between healing and race  

·      Material culture of health and healing

·      Death, mental health, and emotions

·      Historiography of health, healing, and/or medicine

·      Perspectives from a variety of disciplines across the humanities and sciences

 

We welcome proposals from early career researchers, independent scholars, and established scholars alike for monographs, edited volumes, and critical editions. Cross-disciplinary perspectives drawing on multiple fields of study are especially encouraged.


To submit a formal proposal, please complete the following form.

Interested in publishing a book or edited volume with Medica? 

All inquiries should be emailed to: MedicaStudiesPMHH@gmail.com

Scientific Committee

Minji Lee is an assistant professor at Montclair State University. She holds an MA from Seoul National University and a PhD in Religion from Rice University in Houston, Texas.  She joined the Department of Religion after serving as a Visiting Scholar in the Medical Humanities Program at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Dr. Lee specializes in the study of medicine in relation to cultural practices and belief systems – including women’s health, reproductive issues, and comparative analysis of alternative medicine in Korea and the United States. She brings with her an active research agenda, having produced several peer-reviewed articles and conference papers, such as “Woman’s Body In-Between: The Holy and Monstrous Womb in Medieval Medicine and Religion” and “The Me-Too Movement and the Church’s Reaction in Korea.”  Dr. Lee also brings a demonstrated record of excellence in pedagogy and will teach courses in both the Department of Religion and the new Medical Humanities major in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Currently, she is working on her monograph The Medieval Womb Hildegard of Bingen’s Views on the Female Reproductive Body.

Erin Connelly is an Assistant Professor at the School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick supported by a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship to explore questions of ethnopharmacology and the antimicrobial efficacy of ingredients from historical or traditional medical sources. The research involves an interdisciplinary approach to quantitative analyses of historical recipes in surviving medical books, and empirical tests of the antimicrobial activity of ingredients inspired by historical combinations. 

Winston Black holds the Gatto Chair of Christian Studies at St. Francis Xavier University. He is a scholar of the history of religion and medicine in Europe and the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages, specializing in medieval herbalism, Christian healing practices, and the editing of Latin medical texts. He is the author or editor of five books, including Henry of Huntingdon. Anglicanus Ortus: A Verse Herbal of the Twelfth Century (2012), Medicine and Healing in the Premodern West: A History in Documents (2020), and, most recently, Beyond Cadfael: Medieval Medicine and Medical Medievalism (2023), edited with Lucy Barnhouse.

Dianne Burke Moneypenny is a Professor of World Languages and Cultures at Indiana University East who specialises in Medieval Iberian Literature. She also serves as Director of the Honors Program and Student Research. Dr. Moneypenny's current relevant research includes co-editing a volume on Medieval Mediterranean women and food.