Premodern Healthscaping will present recent developments in health history during The Pursuit of Global Urban History conference at University of Leicester.
Chair: Janna Coomans, University of Amsterdam
Organizers: Guy Geltner and Janna Coomans, University of Amsterdam
Panel: Geneviève Dumas, University of Sherbrooke, and Claire Weeda, Leiden University
Taylor Zaneri, University of Amsterdam, and Roos van Oosten, Leiden University
Guy Geltner, University of Amsterdam
July 12, 9:00-10:45
This panel will present recent developments in health history that focus on preventative programs in a variety of premodern urban contexts and interrogates their relevance to comparative and global history. Insights achieved by public health historians and medical archaeologists working across western European cities have challenged a common tendency to see public health as a response to the Industrial Revolution, one that was uniquely enabled by modernization. But can pushing against a hegemonic paradigm of Euro-American modernity from the perspective of earlier European experiences provide relevant, non-hegemonic tools for scholars working in different regions and eras, with different sources and intellectual genealogies, but burdened by a similar teleology? Panelists will reflect on their diverse methods of knowledge production and findings as an invitation to discuss emic and non-essentialized approaches to urban health as a fruitful way to pursue global history, on the one hand, and resist the sovereignty of Western periodization on the other.
You can find more information about the conference and the panel here.
