CfP: Early Modern Women, Religion, and the Body

22-23 July 2014, Loughborough University

Plenary speakers: Professor Mary Fissell (Johns Hopkins) and Dr Katharine Hodgkin (UEL)

With public lecture by Alison Weir (evening of 22 July, Martin Hall Theatre)

This two-day conference will explore the response of early modern texts to the relationship between religion and female bodily health. Scholars have long observed that understandings of the flesh and the spirit were inextricably intertwined in the early modern period, and that women’s writings or writings about women often explored this complex relationship. For instance, how did early modern women understand pain, illness, and health in a religious framework, and was this different to the understanding of those around them? Did women believe that their bodies were sinful? And were male and female religious experiences different because they took place in different bodies?

We invite proposals that address the relationship between religion and health, and the spirit and flesh, with a focus on female experience in any genre in print or manuscript. Genres might include medical, literary, religious, autobiographical, instructive, and rhetorical writings.

Topics might include, but are not limited to

Methods of recording or maintaining bodily and spiritual health

The function of religion/faith in physiological changes (e.g. pregnancy/childbirth/nursing/menstruation)

Illness, providence, and interpretation

Suffering as part of religious experience and conversion

Spiritual melancholy, madness, demonic possession, or witchcraft

The physical effects of prophesising/preaching

Chastity and religious life

Spiritual and physical births/reproductive tropes

Ensoulment and pregnancy

The miraculous or martyred female body

The body and sin

Uses of the Bible in medical treatises

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers, complete panels, or roundtable discussions. Suggestions for discussions on pedagogical approaches to teaching the above topics are also welcome.

Please send abstracts of 300 words for 20-minute papers, or longer proposals for panels or roundtables, to Rachel Adcock, Sara Read, and Anna Ziomek at emwomen@lboro.ac.uk by 31st January 2014.

Downloadable conference Poster early-modern-women‌ Call for Papers

http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/english-drama/events/early-modern-women.html

Twitter: @EMBodyReligion_

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H_WRBI

Maria Rottler

Administratorin der Gemeinschaftsblogs Ordensgeschichte und Geschichte Bayerns; Netzwerke gelehrter Mönche. St. Emmeram im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Tagungsblog "Frobenius Forster"); Roman Zirngibl (Benediktiner in St. Emmeram, Historiker, Archivar)

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