medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

Dear colleagues,

I am teaching (just starting) an undergraduate seminar on Joan of Arc. One of the units I am doing is exploring the literature on mental illness - with articles that appear in journals such as Epilepsia  and Eplipesy and Behavior.  The idea of devoting an entire class to this was in part to answer the question in the negative, and discuss the larger problem of "medicalizing" the past.  But as far as I can tell, the claims in this scholarship is not directly refuted in the more traditional historians scholarship on Joan (or at least I haven't found it).

The problem is akin to the one I learned about first when reading Bynum's Holy Feast in graduate school. She does a good take down of the mystics as anorexic, showing how much more sense it makes to understand these women in the medieval mystical context. (I actually don't remember whether Bynum discusses Joan, and I don't have the book on my shelves here and the library copy is out).  What I need is someone, somewhere who wrote that same assessment for Joan and epilepsy / schizophrenia. 

The danger is, of course, that without this, the students will just think "why yes. This is the answer." And this of course is precisely what I don't want to have happen.

If anyone knows this literature, I would be very grateful!

cecilia

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