Recent scholarship in several disciplines has grappled with the question of how cultural perceptions affect bodily experience. Using an interdisciplinary framework, we will explore the meanings and experience of pain in Europe, particularly in England and France during the long eighteenth century. The course starts and finishes by considering the extent to which a mind and body split occurred during this period. We will read the narratives of sufferers alongside literature, philosophy, and surgico-medical treatises to understand the cultural construction of the experience and understanding of pain. Students will learn how to use and to critique interdisciplinary methods for the study of history, to read a wide variety of primary sources to find historical accounts of the body, and to assess the cultural construction of pain and bodily experience.
- Module Supervisor: Lisa Smith