CfP: Fever: Histories of (a) Disease, c. 1750-1840

Organizers: Stefanie Gänger, Yijie Huang, Teresa Göltl, Jenny Sure, Lea-Marie Trigilia

Date: 10-11 July 2025

We are excited to announce the conference “Fever: Histories of (a) Disease, c. 1750-1840”, which will take place on 10-11 July 2025 at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. Hosted by the ERC CoG Project FEVER based at Heidelberg University, this conference seeks to bring together historians interested in fever(s), widely considered the period’s most common and fatal ailment, in societies within and tied to the Atlantic world.

While ‘fever’ in some sense speaks to a universal aspect of human sickness, its meanings, experiences, and implications varied significantly across different historical contexts. Our interest broadly includes eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century medical discourses on fever in professional and lay spheres before the advent of thermometry, and dynamic sensory experiences, emotional registers, and environmental concerns that fever constantly brought about. Our inquiry also raises important questions about the racialisation of fever in imperial contexts, the translation of febrile disease categories between different medical cultures, the dual role of fever as an epidemic and a quotidian ailment, and so forth. We seek to understand the history of fever across a wide geographical range, from typhus outbreaks in British workhouses to tertian fevers plaguing viceregal Lima and febrile threats haunting South, Southeast and East Asia.

We invite paper proposals engaging with the conference’s thematic focus on fever in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Areas of interest include the history of medicine, science and technology, as well as cultural, material, environmental, social, transregional and comparative histories. Please submit an abstract (200-250 words) and a brief academic biography by 15 December 2024 to fever.project@zegk.uni-heidelberg.de. We are happy to cover our participants’ travel expenses (economy airfare or second-class train tickets) and provide one night's accommodation near the conference venue. We look forward to welcoming you and engaging in inspiring discussions in Heidelberg.