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IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 1703: Disabled and Disabling Animals

Thursday 9 July 2020, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:M(edieval) A(nimal) D(ata-Network), Central European University, Budapest/Wien
Organiser:Alice Choyke, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest
Moderator/Chair:Gerhard Jaritz, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest
Paper 1703-aDisabled by Animal: Medieval Human-Animal Encounters Gone Wrong
(Language: English)
Irina Metzler, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University
Index terms: Daily Life, Medicine
Paper 1703-bHorses, Hawks, and Other One-Legged Beasts: Injuries to Animals in Medieval Welsh Law
(Language: English)
Edgar Rops, Independent Scholar, Latvia
Index terms: Daily Life, Law
Paper 1703-c'You have no more feeling than a blind cart-horse!': Caring for Impaired Horses in the Late Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Sunny Harrison, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Index terms: Daily Life, Medicine
Paper 1703-d'Send Forth the Foot of the Cow': Deliverance and Piety in a Medieval Portuguese Cult
(Language: English)
David Luís Aniceto Soares, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Index terms: Daily Life, Lay Piety, Religious Life
Abstract

Disability of animals can be connected with their physical inabilities that remove them from economic exploitation by humans. It can reflect notions of what disability means for humans, in metaphorical, symbolic, and normative ways. Finally, the practical aspects can certainly interact with the notional ones creating new categories of what it meant to be a disabled medieval animal. The session will explore any kind of injury, illness, attack, or general disablement of animals and the way human beings reacted to these problems, and also human disablements through animal encounters.