CfP: Society of Ancient Medicine and Pharmacology SCS/AIA 26, Individual and Communal Health and Identity
Health and Identity at the Personal and Communal Levels, organized by Aileen Das (University of Michigan), Calloway Scott (University of Cincinnati), and Michiel Meeusen (HU Berlin/KU Leuven)
“Le malattie non esistono, esiste l’uomo malato ...”[1]
What does it mean when one ‘is’ healthy or ill, pained or disabled? What defining impact does such a qualification have on one’s identity as a human being, individually or as part of a community? How are these states ‘recognized’ (socially and diagnostically), and what are the repercussions for concomitant life conditions and expectations? What historical, cultural, political dynamics help in shaping such identities, and how do they relate to personal and communal perceptions and experiences of illness?
The publication of Homo Patiens: Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World (ed. G. Petridou and C. Thumiger, Brill: Leiden, 2015) has been germinal for its attention to the individual, but recent events relating to the Covid-19 pandemic have revealed the limitations of such singular approaches. Increased governmental tracking of disease within certain communities or demographics (e.g. ‘the elderly’) and medical stigmatization, as shown by bio-passporting, closed-border politics, derogative denominations like ‘the Chinese virus’, and the libertarian-identitarian sentiments of the anti-vax movement, call for the triangulation of disease, individual, and community.
By centering focus on how the identity of health and illness is constituted at the personal and communal levels, this panel welcomes a diverse array of perspectives: sociological, epidemiological, diagnostic, epistemological, ethical, and legal. We also encourage comparative and transhistorical approaches that go beyond the ‘ancient world’ narrowly defined, to probe the wider complexity of these vital, and at times very delicate, issues and their enduring relevance.
What collective sense of patient identity speaks from our sources and how does it relate to individual patient cases and experiences (the homo patiens and their affected family, friends, community)? How do society and medicine validate, reinforce, impose, silo, eliminate such identities, for what motives, and to what effect? And to what extent are such identities formed around, and in turn shape, societal aspects of gender, class, race, age, religious identity?
When is one rightfully ill? What ethical and legal concerns define illness and health? How are different forms of illness and medical identity codified, according to what theoretical criteria? And what is the impact of such conceptions on the freedoms and responsibilities of the medical stakeholders involved (e.g., health in the context of employment contracts, inheritance law, civil registration, ancient patient rights, etc.)?
The range of possibilities is vast and not restricted to these questions exclusively. Abstracts must be no more than 500 words, not including bibliography, and should contain the following information:
- a clear initial statement of purpose,
- a brief explanation of the abstract's relationship to the previous literature on the topic, including direct citations of any important literature
- a summary of the argumentation
- some examples to be used in the argumentation.
The abstract should make it clear that the paper is suitable for oral presentation within a 20-minute time limit. For full details, please see the SCS Guidelines for Authors of Abstracts.
Please send anonymized abstracts (no personal details in the abstract or accompanying document) by email to Aileen Das (University of Michigan) by March 14, 2025. The SAM Executive Committee will review all submissions anonymously, and their decision will be communicated to the authors of abstracts by early April.
[1] M.D. Grmek, Nuove prospettive per la storia delle malattie antiche, Napoli, 1988, 20-21.
Contact Information
Aileen Das. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor