IMC 2022: Sessions

Session 1732: Mothers, Motherhood, and Borders in the Medieval World, III: Medicine and the Maternal Body

Thursday 7 July 2022, 14.15-15.45

Organisers:	Kirsty A. S. Bolton, Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Culture / Department of English, University of Southampton Lauren Sisson, Department of History, University of Nottingham
Moderator/Chair:	Lauren Sisson, Department of History, University of Nottingham
Paper 1732-a	Pregnancy and Knowledge in the Old English Medical Tradition (Language: English) Dana Oswald, Department of English, University of Wisconsin-Parkside Index terms: Gender Studies, Medicine
Paper 1732-b	'Her comforte and consolacyoun': Pain Management and Devotion in Childbirth in Late Medieval England (Language: English) Roisin Donohoe, School of Languages Literature & Cultural Studies, Trinity College Dublin Index terms: Gender Studies, Lay Piety, Medicine
Paper 1732-c	Eve (Un)Bound: Bounding the Maternal Body in the Middle English Lives of Adam and Eve (Language: English) Harley Joyce Campbell, Department of English, University of Tennessee, Knoxville Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English
Abstract	This third panel considers interactions between medicine and the maternal body. Dana Oswald explores how Old English medical and prognostic texts demonstrate a negotiation between external, likely male, experts, and women who experienced pregnancy, and how they reveal the difficulties of disobedient reproductive bodies. Róisín Donohoe uses textual, visual, and material culture to examine the array of domestic medicine and devotional tools utilised by women during childbirth, and how childbearing women used different networks to share this information. Harley Joyce Campbell discusses Eve's challenges in The Life of Adam and Eve, using discourses concerning the pregnant body and female embodied religious experience.