CfP: Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine - Cambridge, MA

Submission Deadline: July 15, 2019
The Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and the Health, Humanities and Science Initiative at Northeastern University are pleased to host the 17th meeting of the Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine on October 11–12, 2019 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 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 community that provides a forum for sharing and critiquing graduate student research.

We welcome student presentations on any topic and we especially hope to receive submissions that speak to this year’s theme, Confronting (Medical) Barriers: Accessibilities, Disciplines, and Nationalities. There are many barriers in medicine: the blood-brain barrier and the skin, barriers to access and language barriers, as well as those between disciplines, eras, and nations. With this theme, we hope to focus attention on the ways in which these various borders affect caregivers, patients, and families, as well as scholars hoping to understand medicine across periods, places, and peoples. Some barriers might be damaging, such as problems in translation that inhibit understanding and consent in treatment and research. Others might be productive, such as the formation of a new disciplines or diagnoses. For this conference, we propose that we try and think with borders to see what they can (or cannot) tell us about the history of medicine. We welcome historical projects from all time periods as well as scholarly work in adjacent fields including anthropology, sociology, public health, bioethics, law, gender and sexuality studies, and race, ethnicity, and justice studies. Topics encompassed by this theme include but are by no means limited to:

●          The circulation of medical knowledge across peoples, languages, and nations.
●          Problems of translation, transportation, transferability, and transgression
●          The (in)stability of medical and medical historical disciplines
●          Questions of periodization in the history of medicine and allied fields
●          (Dis)ability and medicine
●          Questions of access, structural inequality, and health justice

Abstracts of 300 words should clearly convey the argument, sources, and relationship to existing literature.  Please submit online athttp://jashistofmed.wordpress.com/abstract-submission/ no later than July 15, 2019.

Registration for the conference is free and is open until September 13, 2019.
If you have any questions, please be in touch via email at jashistofmed@gmail.com.  We look forward to welcoming you to Cambridge in October!