CfP - MEDICINE IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN WORLD 1400-1750, Cambridge UK, 3-4 April 2017
Organised by Valentina Pugliano (University of Cambridge) and Nukhet Varlik (Rutgers-Newark University)
Sponsored by The Wellcome Trust; Christ's College, Cambridge; and the
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of
Cambridge.
This conference aims to offer, for the first time, a comprehensive
picture of medicine, environment and health in the eastern Mediterranean
and the Near East, ca. 1400-1750. While a considerable body of
scholarship exists on Islamic and Byzantine science and medicine and
their influence on the medieval Latin West, the state of medical theory
and practice in the following centuries has been comparatively neglected
and often spoken of in terms of intellectual stagnation and decline.
The conference aims to challenge this narrative and reveal the continued
vitality of knowledge making and transfer across the eastern
Mediterranean world. Taking as our focus the politically heterogeneous
southern Europe and eastern Mediterranean, the Mamluk Kingdom, and the
Ottoman Empire, we aim to reconstruct the healthscape of this region in
the early modern period, exploring its medical unity and disunity and
the human and environmental factors that played a part in it. (More
information here https://www.academia.edu/25524
Confirmed speakers include Sonja Brentjes (Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science), Peregrine Horden (Royal Holloway), Harun Küçük
(University of Pennsylvania), Gianna Pomata (Johns Hopkins), and Miri
Shefer-Mossensohn (Tel Aviv University).
We hope to include a selection of the papers presented at the conference
in an edited volume currently under negotiation with Cambridge
University Press.
Conference dinner and one night of accommodation at Christ’s College
will be provided, and help will be available to secure additional nights
of accommodation. Speakers will be responsible for making their own
travel arrangements. Limited financial assistance may be available
pending funding.
Please submit a title, abstract of 300 words, and a CV jointly to the organisers Valentina Pugliano and Nükhet Varlık at medicineeasternmediterranean@g