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***Please note: the DEADLINE for this conference has been EXTENDED TO 
JULY 15, 2016***

CALL FOR PAPERS

MEDICINE, ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN WORLD, 
1400-1750

3-4 April 2017, Christ's College, Cambridge UK

Organised by Valentina Pugliano (University of Cambridge) and Nukhet 
Varlik (Rutgers-Newark University)

Sponsored by The Wellcome Trust; Christ's College, Cambridge; and the 
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of 
Cambridge.

This conference aims to offer, for the first time, a comprehensive 
picture of medicine, environment and health in the eastern Mediterranean 
and the Near East, ca. 1400-1750. While a considerable body of 
scholarship exists on Islamic and Byzantine science and medicine and 
their influence on the medieval Latin West, the state of medical theory 
and practice in the following centuries has been comparatively neglected 
and often spoken of in terms of intellectual stagnation and decline. The 
conference aims to challenge this narrative and reveal the continued 
vitality of knowledge making and transfer across the eastern 
Mediterranean world. Taking as our focus the politically heterogeneous 
southern Europe and eastern Mediterranean, the Mamluk Kingdom, and the 
Ottoman Empire, we aim to reconstruct the healthscape of this region in 
the early modern period, exploring its medical unity and disunity and 
the human and environmental factors that played a part in it. (Please 
find a more detailed description enclosed.)

Confirmed speakers include Sonja Brentjes (Max Planck Institute for the 
History of Science), Peregrine Horden (Royal Holloway), Harun Küçük 
(University of Pennsylvania), Gianna Pomata (Johns Hopkins), and Miri 
Shefer-Mossensohn (Tel Aviv University).

We hope to include a selection of the papers presented at the conference 
in an edited volume currently under negotiation with Cambridge 
University Press.

Conference dinner and one night of accommodation at Christ’s College 
will be provided, and help will be available to secure additional nights 
of accommodation. Speakers will be responsible for making their own 
travel arrangements. Limited financial assistance may be available 
pending funding.

Please submit a title, abstract of 300 words, and a CV jointly to the 
organisers Valentina Pugliano and Nükhet Varlık at 
[log in to unmask] by 15 July 2016.

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