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IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 1010: Bodily Dimensions: Sensual and Supernatural Borders, I

Wednesday 8 July 2020, 09.00-10.30

Organiser:Jack Ford, Department of History, University College London
Moderator/Chair:Jack Ford, Department of History, University College London
Paper 1010-aHidden Brains in Sensual Bodies: Boundaries between Medieval Art History and Cognitive Science
(Language: English)
Rachael Vause, Department of Art History, University of Delaware
Index terms: Art History - General, Science
Paper 1010-bSensation (Un)Bound: Literary Synaesthesia and Cross-Sensory Perception in Dante's Purgatorio XXIV
(Language: English)
Aistė Kiltinavičiūtė, Faculty of Modern & Medieval Languages & Linguistics University of Cambridge
Index terms: Language and Literature - Italian, Medicine
Paper 1010-cWho Is She?: Hildegard of Bingen's Apocalyptic Woman and the Crossed Boundaries of Women's Bodies
(Language: English)
Lauren Cole, Education Services University of Bristol
Index terms: Theology, Women's Studies
Abstract

A common theme across this session is the porosity of the borders of sensation. While perception existed as a single category in medieval thought, each paper calls this unitary category into question. In doing so, cognitive science is utilised to reconstruct early medieval English mentalities; synaesthesia or sensory blending is examined in Dante's Purgatorio XXIV; and the different 'senses' of visionary experience are examined in Hildegard's Scivias. Ultimately, this session serves to problematise the medieval senses by revealing the overlapping, and sometimes contradictory, dimensions of sense, and how these dimensions blur the lines between embodiment and disembodiment, time and space.