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IMC 2018: Sessions

Session 1206: Medieval Bodies Ignored, I: Humans and Animals

Wednesday 4 July 2018, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Organiser:Sunny Harrison, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Moderator/Chair:Rose A. Sawyer, School of History / School of English, University of Leeds
Paper 1206-aBeast, Heal Thyself: Animals Treating Animals in Late Medieval Illustrated Veterinary Treatises
(Language: English)
Sunny Harrison, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Index terms: Art History - General, Medicine, Science, Social History
Paper 1206-bMan's Best Friend: Animals as Mobility Aids in Late Medieval Art
(Language: English)
Rachael Gillibrand, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Index terms: Art History - General, Medicine, Social History, Technology
Paper 1206-cAnimals on Trial: The Beastly Problem of Criminal Culpability
(Language: English)
Irina Metzler, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University
Index terms: Law, Medicine, Social History, Theology
Abstract

Since the publication of Caroline Walker Bynum's seminal 'Why all the fuss about the body? A Medievalist's Perspective' (Critical Inquiry, 22.1 (1993), 1-33), the discourse around bodies as historical bodies has flourished. These sessions will pick out, from the many discourses that medieval people and modern historians have used to discuss the body, a few of the notes that are sometimes overlooked. This session, the first of a linked pair, grapples with the varied ways that the boundaries between human and non-human bodies shifted and were manipulated during the Middle Ages, though the examination of animals as medical healers of other animals, animals as supportive physical aids to humans, and animals as the targets of legal action.