The Reformation of
the Body
14 May 2019
Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
About
Having called upon historians to pay attention to embodied experience in his 1991 essay, Roy Porter later revised this work a decade later, stating that 'Body History has become the historiographical dish of the day', and since then it has seemingly only grown in significance.(1) For the early modern period, historians such as Ulinka Rublack and Herman Roodenburg have shown how contemporary theories about the body may illuminate experiences of embodiment, and, of the Lutheran Reformation, Lyndal Roper has prominently stated that 'One of the things that set Luther apart from many other Christian thinkers is his remarkably positive attitude toward the body'.(2)
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Drawing on such studies, this one-day conference will focus on the impact of the Reformations on the body. It will question the extent to which the immense changes taking place with the Reformations (not only religious change but also societal, cultural, political and psychological) affected understandings of the body, as well as experiences and practices of embodiment.
It thus aims to bring together historians working on the history of the body in this period, to approach 'The Reformation of the Body' from a variety of different angles. It will consider not only how the body was understood, but also the ways in which it was represented, fashioned, cured, fed and experienced. In doing so, it will thus not only contribute to the growing field of 'Body History' but will also present an original framework for understanding and approaching the Reformations.
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This event is free of charge.
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(1) Roy Porter, ‘History of the Body Reconsidered’, in New Perspectives on Historical Writing (2nd Edition), ed. Peter Burke (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), pp. 233-236.
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(2) Lyndal Roper, ‘Martin Luther’s Body: The “Stout Doctor” and His Biographers’, The American Historical Review 115, no. 2 (2010), p. 384.
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When
14 May 2019
9.00-6.30PM
Where
Room 6, Faculty of History
University of Cambridge
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Keynote Speakers
Prof. Michael Stolberg
University of Würzburg
Michael Stolberg is Chair of the History of Medicine at the University of Würzburg, Germany. He originally trained as a doctor, before receiving his PhD in History and Philosophy at the University of Munich. He has worked as an Assistant Professor at the Technical University in Munich and as a Research Fellow in Florence, Venice and Cambridge. He has published widely on illness and the experience of the sick body in early modern Germany and his latest monograph, The History of Palliative Care was translated into English in 2017.
Prof. Maria Hayward
University of Southampton
Maria Hayward is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Southampton. She completed her BA in History at the University of Kent, and received her PhD from the London School of Economics. Having both worked and studied at the textile conservation centre at Hampton Court Palace, she was previously director of the AHRC Centre for Textile Conservation and Textile Studies. She has been part of the History department at the University of Southampton since 2008 and has published extensively on Tudor and Stuart material culture, particularly textiles and clothing.
Dr. Alex Bamji
University of Leeds
Alex Bamji is Associate Professor at the University of Leeds. She holds a BA in History, MPhil in Historical Studies, and PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. She joined the School of History at Leeds in 2008 and in 2018-19, she is a Melville J Kahn Fellow at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Her research focuses on religious reform, death and disease in early modern society and her current project concerns 'Death in early modern Venice'.
'One of the things that set Luther apart from many other
Christian thinkers is his remarkably positive attitude toward the body'
Lyndal Roper, 'Martin Luther’s Body: The “Stout Doctor” and His Biographers’, The American Historical Review 115, no. 2 (2010).
Schedule
9.00 - 9.45
Registration and Welcome
(Coffee and Tea in SCR)
9.45 - 10.45
Keynote Speaker
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Michael Stolberg (University of Würzburg) / The Reformer's Body: Martin Luther and His Diseases
10.45 - 11.15
Coffee and Tea Break
11.15 - 12.30
Session One
Christopher Kissane (London School of Economics) / ‘Discipline of the Body’: Luther, Fasting and Embodiment
Martin Heale (University of Liverpool) / Exercises Tending to Godliness? Protestant Views on Asceticism in Sixteenth-Century England
12.30 - 13.15
Lunch
13.15 - 14.30
Session Two
Holly Fletcher (University of Cambridge) / ‘Belly-Worshippers and Greed-Paunches’: Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation
Edmund Wareham (University of Oxford) / A Trip to the Baths in Sixteenth-Century Germany: Devotion, Polemic and the Role of the Imagination
14.30 - 15.30
Keynote Speaker
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Maria Hayward (University of Southampton) / Anatomical Abuses: Clothes and the Reformed English Body
15.30 - 16.00
Coffee and Tea Break
16.00 - 17.15
Session Three
Luisa Coscarelli-Larkin (Mannheim) / Pomanders and Rosary Beads: The Lutheran Perception of Smell
Herman Roodenburg (Free University of Amsterdam/Meertens Institute) / Inwardness and Images in the Low Countries: From a Fifteenth-Century Book of Hours to a Mennonite Pastor's Portrait
17.15 - 18.15
Keynote Speaker
Alex Bamji (University of Leeds) / Dressing for Purgatory: Confraternities, Embodied Devotion and the Counter-Reformation
18.15 - 18.30
Closing Remarks
Contact
Supported by the DAAD Cambridge Research Hub for German Studies, the George Macaulay Trevelyan Fund and the School of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Holly Fletcher
Murray Edwards College
Cambridge
CB4 0DF