Call for papers: Biennial meeting of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health (EAHMH) (7‐10 September 2021; hosted by the KU Leuven). Online conference.
Panel “Overlap, collaboration and consensus between religion and the mind sciences”
In the context of the 2021 biennial meeting of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health (EAHMH) – dedicated this year to the general theme “Faith, Medicine and Religion” – we invite submissions for a panel discussion devoted to exploring the connections between religion and the various fields of mind sciences.
The development of western modern medicine has traditionally been thought of as running parallel to the progress of secularization. The myth of the birth of psychiatry itself is rooted in the anticlerical aftermath of the French Revolution. In the last decades, however, historians have found and explored many places of continuity between religion and the modern medical domains. The “psy” disciplines in particular have had, more than any other medical disciplines, to grapple with their pre-modern philosophical-theological heritage, and sometimes prolonged it in new and ambiguous ways well into the 19th and 20th centuries. In this panel we would like to explore such instances of connection, overlap, collaboration or consensus between religion and the mind sciences (psychiatry, neurology, psychology, etc.); whether they happened on the ground between medical professionals and religious men and women; or in the abstract plane of scientific and theological ideas; whether they were embodied by singular individuals or united in mixed practices.
Although the modern period is the starting point of our reflection, contributions on earlier periods are welcomed as well.
The conference will take place online.
Individual submissions must be submitted by 25 January 2021 and should comprise a 250-word abstract, including five key words, and a short CV (max. one page) with contact information.
Send to Valérie Leclercq (Université Libre de Bruxelles) : Valerie.Leclercq@ulb.ac.be
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