Subject: [agade] CALLS FOR PAPERS: Demons and Illness:
From Siam Bhayro <[log in to unmask]>:
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Demons and Illness: Theory and Practice from Antiquity to the Early Modern
Period Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter
22 – 24th April 2013
In many near eastern traditions, demons appear as a cause of illness:
most famously in the stories of possessed people cured by Christ.
These traditions influenced perceptions of illness in Judaism, Christianity
and Islam in later centuries but the ways in which these cultures viewed
demons and illness have received comparatively little attention. For
example, who were these demons? How did they cause illness? Why did they
want to? How did demons fit into other explanations for illness? How
could demonic illnesses be cured and how did this relate to other kinds of
cure? How far did medical or philosophical theory affect how people
responded to demonic illnesses in practice?
This conference will take a comparative approach, taking a wide geographical
and chronological sweep but confining itself to this relatively specific set
of questions. Because Jewish, Christian and Islamic ideas about demons and
illness drew on a similar heritage of ancient religious texts from New
Testament times to the early modern period there is real scope to draw
meaningful comparisons between the different periods and cultures. What
were the common assumptions made by different societies? When and why did
they differ? What was the relationship between theory and practice? We
would welcome papers which address these issues for any period between
antiquity and the early modern period, and which discuss Christian, Jewish
or Islamic traditions.
The conference is hosted by the Centre for Medical History at the University
of Exeter, on April 22nd-24th, 2013. Please send abstracts
by 15th September 2012 to the conference organizers, Catherine Rider and
Siam Bhayro, Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter:
email [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
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