science and culture

12th-Annual Medievalists @ Penn (M@P) Graduate Conference

Date: April 17, 2020
Keynote: Elly Truitt (Bryn Mawr College), author of
Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art (2015)

The Victorian Studies Association of Ontario-Sponsored ACCUTE Joint Session: “Eco-Victorians: Water, Land, and the World,” For the Humanities Congress at the University of Western Ontario, May 30th-June 5th, 2020

Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World
19–21 March 2020 Maynooth University, Ireland

This interdisciplinary conference explores the reception and transmission of medical knowledge between and across England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Scandinavia during the medieval period, and will draw on history, literature, philosophy, science, religion, art, archaeology and manuscript studies. It will interrogate medical texts and ideas in both Latin and vernacular languages, addressing questions of translation, cultural and scientific inheritance and exchange, and historical conceptions of health and of the human being within nature.

In an ever changing world the problems of setting boundaries as well as the need to create meanings and establish understanding of diverse phenomena have always been of the utmost importance for humanity. Borders, boundaries, frontiers, and borderlands, naturally formed or man made, are grounded in various ethical traditions, and have always been associated with limits and restrictions. The ongoing process of globalisation is changing the role and stereotypes of borders, so that they are often seen as opportunities rather than constraints. However, in some cases they are still being militarized and conflicted.

Food is a basic foundation of culture and society, it is vital to our health and well-being and it plays a significant role in our everyday creative engagement with nature. The shifts in activities surrounding food acquisition, preparation and consumption are not only essential for learning a culinary tradition but for examining a broader societal change.

This conference will explore food as a complex cultural product, an indicator of social, religious and political identity. It will focus on people's relationship with food and discuss how food choices are determined by historical period, region, class, gender, kinship and/or ethnicity.