CFP: Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine 2015
CFP:
Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine
October
16 - 17, 2015
University
of Pennsylvania
The
University of Pennsylvania is pleased to host the 13th Joint Atlantic Seminar
for the History of Medicine on October 16 – 17, 2015 in Philadelphia. JAS Med
is convened annually for the presentation of research by young scholars working
on the history of medicine and public health. The meeting was founded in 2002
to foster a collegial intellectual community that provides a forum for sharing
and critiquing graduate student research.
We
welcome student presentations on any topic and time period and especially hope
to receive submissions that speak to this year’s theme of Materiality
Medica. Conceived broadly, this theme directs our attention to the
physicality of bodies and the implements, practical ministrations, and drugs
involved in their care. Analytic focus on materiality also invites consideration
of the practical ways that non-human actors, including the built/natural
environment and animals and other living organisms, have had a crucial bearing
on population and personal health.
Materials
in the history of medicine provide both methodological challenges and
opportunities as objects that resist translation into abstract discourse but
may also provide unique clues into elusive domains of historical
experience. What resources, for instance, do the objects preserved in
historical collections—such as old surgical tools, anatomical specimens, or
personal hygiene goods provide to the historian accustomed to working with
textual documentation? How do we do narrative justice to the physical
messiness of bodies that develop burning fevers, inexplicable twinges, or
experience suffering and pain?
Other
topics encompassed by this theme include but are by no means limited to:
•
Trans-regional commodity chains that link objects and people in disparate
settings
•
Affective responses to intimate body work and the manual labor of care
•
Practices and tools that translate between abstract and embodied ways of
knowing
•
Spaces and infrastructures of clinical care
•
The inscription of social and racial difference in material conditions of
health
Submissions
are welcome from a wide range of scholarly disciplines. Abstracts should
be no more than 300 words and clearly convey the argument, sources, and
relationship to existing literature of the paper to be presented. Please submit
no later than May 25, 2015 at http://jasmed2015.wordpress.com/submit/.
Registration
for the conference is free and is open until October 1. If you have any
questions, please be in touch via email at jasmedpenn2015@gmail.com. We
look forward to welcoming you to Philadelphia in October!
—Elaine
LaFay and Maxwell Rogoski,
On behalf of 2015 JAS Med Organizing Committee