IMC 2019: Sessions

Session 347: Monsters and Mental Health

Monday 1 July 2019, 16.30-18.00

Sponsor:	Monsters: The Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology through Scholarly Theory and Practical Application (MEARCSTAPA)
Organiser:	Kayla Kemhadjian, School of English, University of Nottingham
Moderator/Chair:	Wendy J. Turner, Department of History, Anthropology & Philosophy, Augusta University, Georgia
Paper 347-a	Mental Health and the Demonic in Early Medieval England (Language: English) Peter Dendle, Department of English, University of Toronto, Downtown Index terms: Daily Life, Medicine
Paper 347-b	Monsters of Silence: The Pestiferous and the Monstrous in Late-Medieval Depictions of Carthusians and in Carthusian Writings (Language: English) Tom Gaens, Faculteit der Letteren, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Index terms: Art History - General, Language and Literature - Latin, Monasticism
Paper 347-c	Mental Health and the Pathology of Monsters in Early English Medicine (Language: English) Gwendolyne Knight, Historiska institutionen, Stockholms Universitet Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Medicine, Mentalities
Paper 347-d	Madness and the Boundaries of the Human in Anglo-Saxon England (Language: English) Marit Ronen, Department of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Social History
Abstract	In modern times, mental health issues, like monsters, are used in fictive discourses to create a binary of the 'normal'. In some instances, mental health is exploited as a marker of the monstrous, if not the monster itself. Similar instances abound in the Middle Ages, when the border between mental health and the supernatural ran thin. This panel seeks to examine the interconnectedness of mental health and the monstrous. In doing so, this panel may uncover and examine medieval stigmas around mental health which still permeate western society.