The Graduate History Association and the Department of History at
Washington University in St. Louis are pleased to announce the
inaugural Graduate Conference on the History of the Body, to be held
October 20-21, 2011.
In 2001, Roy Porter remarked that body history had become the
“historiographical dish of the day.” Ten years on, histories of the
body continue to flourish. Often working at the interstices of a
number of methods and approaches, the field has produced innovative
and compelling articulations of the body as a category of historical
analysis. As thinking about bodies has occasioned ongoing encounters,
clashes, and border-crossings between a variety of disciplines, this
conference aims to promote conversations across scholarly divides by
showcasing and reflecting on graduate-level scholarship on the history
of the body, in all periods and regions, and from a variety of
methodological approaches. We invite papers related to a broad number
of thematic areas, including but not limited to:
*normality and deviancy
*medicine and disease
*sexuality and reproduction
*food
*blood and race
*physical space
We’re also pleased to announce Professor Mary Fissell, renowned
historian of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University, as the
conference keynote speaker. Professor Fissell’s first book, Patients,
Power and the Poor (Cambridge 1991), examined how patients’ choices
shaped a health-care system in the eighteenth century. Her more recent
Vernacular Bodies (Oxford 2004) explored the politics of reproduction
in early modern medicine. Professor Fissell’s current project involves
Aristotle’s Masterpiece, for three centuries the best-selling book
about sex and reproduction. Her address will be held in conjunction
with the Washington University in St. Louis Department of History
Colloquium Series.
Graduate Students in any field of study are invited to submit
proposals for individual research papers. Abstracts of approximately
250 words should be submitted online:
http://history.artsci.wustl.edu/GHA/Conference.
The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2011.