The Graduate History Association at Washington University in St. Louis is pleased to announce the inaugural Graduate Conference on the History of the Body, to be held October 20-22 on the Danforth Campus in St. Louis.
In 2001, Roy Porter remarked that body history had become the "historiographical dish of the day." Ten years on, histories of the body continue to flourish. Often working at the interstices of a number of methods and approaches, the field has produced innovative and compelling articulations of the body as a category of historical analysis. As thinking about bodies has occasioned ongoing encounters, clashes, and border-crossings between a variety of disciplines, this conference aims to promote conversations across scholarly divides by showcasing and reflecting on graduate-level scholarship on the history of the body, in all periods and regions, and from a variety of methodological approaches.
Thursday, October 20th
Keynote Address: BLOOD WILL OUT: KINSHIP, THE BODY, AND POPULAR MEDICINE, 1750–1860
Professor Mary Fissell, Department of the History of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University
Busch 100, 4 pm
Reception to follow in Busch 18
All panels held in Busch 18
Friday, October 21st
10:30–12:15 Bodies Between the Public and the Private
Chair: Professor Rebecca Messbarger, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Washington University in St. Louis
“Body Voyaging and the Work of Fear in Biotourism”
Kristen Ehrenberger, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of History & College of Medicine
“Public Bodies: Anatomical Exhibitions from ‘The Transparent Man’ to ‘Miss Anatomy’ “
Johnathan Puff, University of Michigan, Department of Architectural History
“Learning Privacy: Public School Locker Rooms in the Early Twentieth Century”
Laura Walikainen, University of Delaware, Department of History
“Phantoms of the Opéra: Degas and the Male Spectator”
Amanda Holly Beresford, Washington University in St. Louis, Department of Art History & Archaeology
1:30–3:00 Bodies as Politics, Bodies as Nation
Chair: Professor Nancy Reynolds, Department of History, Washington University in St. Louis
“Ataturk Embodied”
Hatice Esra Mescioglu, Istanbul Bilgi University, Department of Cultural Studies
“‘The Real War Will Never Get in the Books:’ Language and Wounds in the American Civil War”
Sarah Handley-Cousins, University at Buffalo, Department of History
“Arthur Ashe’s Body Politics”
Dan Royles, Temple University, Department of History
3:15–4:45 Bodies Ordered: Epistemology, Language, and Science
Chair: Dr. Lihong Shi, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis
“The Geneticization of Obesity: A History”
James Roane, Columbia University, Department of History
“Civilizing Marriage, Controlling Birth and Regulating Students’ Sexuality: The Making of Zaolian in China’s Long 20th Century”
Yubin Shen, Georgetown University, Department of History
Saturday, October 22nd
10:00–11:30 Bodies Marking Deviance, Disgust, and Protest
Chair: Professor Sara van den Berg, Department of English Literature, Saint Louis University
“Disability, Disgust, and Little Marie Broc: Unregulated Bodies of the 1850s”
Courtney Andree, Washington University in St. Louis, Department of English Literature
“In Good Spirits: Madness and Deviancy in 1920s-1950s Syria”
Beverly Tsacoyianis, Washington University in St. Louis, Department of History
“Liberté, Egalité, Femininité: The Mouvement Libération des Femmes and Abortion Reform (1970-1975)”
Elise Franklin, Boston College, Department of History
11:45–1:15 Bodies Apart: Identification and Exclusion
Chair: Jenny Westrick, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Washington University in St. Louis
“Building for ‘The Other’: Architecture, Poverty, and the Body in Victorian England”
Nina E. Harkrader, New York University, Institute of Fine Art
“Slaves Need Not Apply: The Apostle Paul’s Attitude Towards Slaves’ Participation in His Early Communities”
Guy Niederhauser, University of Missouri - Columbia, Department of Religious Studies
“Foreign Body and Foreign Land in Greco-Roman Ethnography”
Clara Bosak-Schroeder, University of Michigan, Department of Classics
“’A Change of Airs’: Missionaries, Sickness, and Environment in Alta California”
Anne M. Reid, University of Southern California, Department of History
Panel Chairs
Rebecca Messbarger is Associate Professor of Italian and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. Her major research interests center on Italian Enlightenment culture, in particular the place and purpose of women in civic, academic and social life, and the intersection of art and science in the production of anatomical wax models during the age. Professor Messbarger is currently organizing an international conference on “The Enlightenment Pope: Benedict XIV (1675-1758),” to be held jointly at Washington University and St. Louis University in May 2012.
Nancy Reynolds is Assistant Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research interests lie in the social and cultural history of the modern Middle East, and commerce and consumption in twentieth century Egypt. Professor Reynolds is current recipient of an ACLS Fellowship for her project, “‘A Pyramid for the Living’: The Politics of Environment, Culture, and National Development in the Building of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt, 1956-1971.” Her book, A City Consumed: Urban Commerce, the Cairo Fire, and the Politics of Decolonization in Egypt, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press in spring 2012.
Lihong Shi is an ACLS New Faculty Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Shi works on reproductive choice and demographic change in China, and her dissertation is titled “Embracing a Singleton-Daughter: An Emerging Transition of Reproductive Choice in Rural Northeast China.” Dr. Shi received her Ph.D. from Tulane University.
Sara van den Berg is Professor of English at Saint Louis University. Her research interests include seventeenth-century literature, medical humanities, and disability studies. She recently published The Divorce Tracts of John Milton: Texts and Contexts, co-edited with W. Scott Howard, and Language, Culture, and Identity: The Legacy of Walter J. Ong, S.J., co-edited with Thomas M. Walsh. Her current research projects are a book on the cultural meanings of the dwarf body and a study of narrative as a measurement of pain.
Jenny Westrick studies early-modern British history at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research interests lie at the intersection of religion, culture, law, and science, and include the history of medicine, the family, crime, demonology and witchcraft, and the Reformation. Her dissertation examines sixteenth- and seventeenth-century beliefs about the transmission of depraved character through bloodlines.
This conference would not have been possible without the generous co-sponsorship of:
- Department of Art History & Architecture
- The Center for the Humanities
- Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures
- Department of History and the History Colloquium
- International & Area Studies
- Religious Studies Program
- Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program
- 2011 Graduate Conference Organizing Committee
- Rajbir Hazelwood & Jenny Westrick, Co-Chairs
- Courtney Andree, Andia Augustin, Patrick Brugh, Bryna Campbell, Anita Chary, Boncho Dragiyski, Jane Green, Sara Jay, Nicole Last, Anna Leeper, Bianca Lopez, James Palmer, and Lei Qin
- 2011 Graduate Conference Faculty Advisers
- Jean Allman, Derek Hirst, and Corinna Treitel
- 2012 Graduate Conference Co-Chairs
- Jane Green and Lisa Lillie