Welcome to Helsinki in just a few days!

The conference is about to begin, so here are some final details. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at chimed-2@helsinki.fi!

Due to some last-minute cancellations, the conference program has changed quite a lot. The final schedule is available below. We did our best to keep presentations on the same day as they were in the previous version, but your time of presentation may have changed. Please note that the conference program starts on Monday at 9:15. Registration opens outside the conference rooms (Metsätalo building, 3rd floor, rooms 6 and 7) at 8:30.
Final final program (edited 7 June): CHIMED-2_schedule_final_final

Book of abstracts: Abstracts

Your conference fee includes all coffee breaks and lunches (salad buffets) on Monday and Tuesday. A list of suggestions for lunch places for Wednesday is available here.

A booklet of abstracts will be posted here on Friday (7 June). In order to reduce the amount of unnecessary printing, we will not include the booklet in your conference packs. Please let us know at chimed-2@helsinki.fi if you would like to have a paper copy of the booklet and we will have one for you at the registration desk.

The University of Helsinki provides a wireless connection through the eduroam network.

Arriving in Helsinki: We recommend you take a train from the airport to the centrail railway station. There are two trains (I and P), running every 5-10 minutes during the day and 15-20 minutes after 7 p.m.). You can take either train, as they both end up at the central railway station in 30-35 minutes. Make sure you buy your ABC-zone ticket from a ticket machine before you get on the train (machines are located outside the entrance to the station between terminals 1 and 2, as well as in the baggage hall claim in terminal 2).

The weather forecast promises mixed weather for us, though only with a slight chance of rain (fingers crossed this holds!). As a city by the sea, Helsinki is fairly windy, so especially those of you coming to the conference dinner in Suomenlinna on Tuesday will want to be prepared for a stiff sea breeze.

Here is a draft version of the conference programme.

CHIMED-2_draft-schedule

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/