"Methodological Issues in Framing Culture/Framing Disease before 1900." The workshop will involve a round table discussion of short abstracts on the theme of the framing of disease in the cultural history of medicine prior to 1900

"Methodological Issues in Framing Culture/Framing Disease before 1900."



The workshop will involve a round table discussion of short abstracts on the theme of the framing of disease in the cultural history of medicine prior to 1900. Abstracts presented and discussed in Paris will then form the basis for the Oxford conference. We are presently in discussion with a number of academic presses for subsequent publication of papers.


DATES.

11 May 2002, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 45 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris

26 October 2002, New College, Oxford.


STATEMENT

The cultural understanding of medicine includes discussion of the "frames" through which, and inside which, disease is constructed. These processes of formation are complex and usually require broad historical contexts for their conceptualization. They normally embrace multiple meanings given to pain, suffering, deprivation, death and, especially, the illness diagnoses offered by medical practitioners. But they also construe language and discourse as inherent in the process. For these reasons, narrative, genre, and metaphor assume larger roles than they ordinarily have in the work of historians of medicine and others interested in the historical formation of disease. The "frame", then, is inherently interdisciplinary in the sense that it belongs to no single discourse or historical mentality.

For further thoughts, see Charles E. Rosenberg and Janet Golden (eds),
Framing Disease: Studies in Cultural History, New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1992.


ABSTRACTS.

If you are interested in presenting and discussing your ideas in Paris and developing the themes to be explored at the Oxford conference, please send a clear abstract of 300-400 words, describing your subject field, the methodology to be used, and the specific way that FRAMING DISEASE within culture will be approached.

Submitted papers will probably be 6000-7000 words (inclusive of endnotes and bibliography). You do not have to come to Paris in order to present at Oxford, though all involvement is greatly encouraged.

Abstracts should be sent as soon as possible to Miranda Gill at New
College, Oxford:

miranda.gill@new.ox.ac.uk


ORGANISING COMMITTEE.

The organising committee forming the centre of the project are:

Professor George Rousseau, De Montfort University, Leicester
Dr David Haycock, Junior Research Fellow, Wolfson College, Oxford
Malte Herwig, Junior Research Fellow, Merton College, Oxford
Miranda Gill, Doctoral Student, New College, Oxford