CALL FOR PAPERS
International Conference on Historical Medical Discourse (CHIMED-2)
The second International Conference on Historical Medical Discourse (CHIMED-2) will be held at the University of Helsinki 10–12 June 2019. The conference series was initiated in Milan in 2017 and focuses on multidisciplinary research into European historical medical discourse. We welcome studies drawing from linguistics, literary studies and history – among others – to present a comprehensive and well-rounded view of medical discourse in Europe. The second conference focuses on medical discourse in English in the period 1500–1900. Studies may be either synchronic or diachronic, and a long view may stretch even beyond the main frame of time. In accordance with the multidisciplinary aims of the conference series, we encourage papers that approach medical discourse from different methodological and disciplinary perspectives. The language of the conference is English.
We are pleased to announce our two plenary speakers (confirmed):
Dr. Elaine Leong (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin) and
Prof. Giovanni Iamartino (Universitá degli Studi di Milano)
The programme will also include an interdisciplinary panel, “Future trends in historical medical discourse”, with invited speakers who will discuss their views on future developments in their own fields and potentials of collaboration between historians, linguists and literary scholars. The three panelists will be Louise Hill Curth (Winchester), Andrew Mangham (Reading) and Tony McEnery (Lancaster). In addition, the conference will include a tutorial session on the use of the medical corpora compiled in Helsinki.
We invite submissions for presentations of 30 minutes (20 min. + 10 min. discussion). Abstracts of no more than 500 words (excluding references) should be submitted through The Linguist List’s EasyAbs service at linguistlist.org/easyabs/chimed-2, and they are due by 31 January 2019. All abstracts will be reviewed by an international scientific committee.
Possible topics of papers include the following:
- medical discourses in their sociohistorical contexts
- discourses on specific illnesses or treatments
- representations of illnesses in literary fiction
- changes in the medical marketplace
- communication on medical issues for different audiences
- styles and metaphors in medical discourse
- narratives in medical discourse
- appropriation of earlier medical ideas and topics
- developments in genres and text types (both literary and non-literary)
- vernacularization of medical and scientific texts: English, Latin and other languages
- gender and medicine
Welcome to Helsinki! Local organizing committee:
Carla Suhr, Irma Taavitsainen, Turo Hiltunen
Contact address: chimed-2@helsinki.fi
Conference website: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/chimed-2/