IMC 2017: Sessions
Session 1018: Exceptionally Healthy?: Exploring Disease, Disfigurement, and Disability as the Norm in Medieval Culture
Wednesday 5 July 2017, 09.00-10.30
| Sponsor: | Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University / Wellcome 'Effaced' Project, Swansea University |
|---|---|
| Organiser: | Patricia E. Skinner, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University |
| Moderator/Chair: | Elma Brenner, Wellcome Library, London |
| Paper 1018-a | Epilepsy and Otherness: The Prophet and His Detractors (Language: English) Index terms: Medicine, Rhetoric, Sermons and Preaching, Social History |
| Paper 1018-b | 'Normality' and the 'Other' at the End of the World: Sickness and Disability in the Passio Olavi (Language: English) Index terms: Medicine, Religious Life, Social History |
| Paper 1018-c | Looking Strange: A Positive Asset? (Language: English) Index terms: Medicine, Religious Life, Social History |
| Abstract | Engaging with the problematic category 'others', this sessions takes as its starting point the sheer ubiquity of sick, disfigured and disabled persons in medieval narrative and legal texts, and ask whether it is tenable to propose good health as a 'normal' human state between 500 and 1500CE. The panellists take a queer view that challenges the paradigmatic position of those who were sick, disfigured or incapacitated as excluded or 'on the margins', and instead illustrates the necessity of inclusion of these groups in discourses of power and piety. |