QMCECS Seminar: Karen Harvey (Birmingham) 6 November 2018

Tuesday 6 November 2018

Karen Harvey

(University of Birmingham)

What is a Material History of the Body?

That the body is a social and cultural construction is a leitmotif of historical scholarship. The body is also a physical entity that constitutes experience. This paper explores what happens when we apply ‘the material turn’ to the human body. With a focus on eighteenth-century Britain, it considers first what historians might learn when they integrate physical evidence of the material body into their research, as well as some of the challenges of undertaking this kind of work. Using written documents, the paper then examines the potential for studying the experience of the body – embodiment – in the past. Both approaches can help us understand better the ways that age, gender and rank affected the experiences of eighteenth-century men and women.

Chair: Amanda Vickery

 

All welcome

Time: 5.00-7.00pm.

Venue: Seminar Room, Lock-Keeper’s Cottage Graduate Centre, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End, London, E1 4NS.

[Travel instructions: take the Central Line or District Line to Mile End. Exit the tube station, turn left down Mile End Road, crossing the Burdett Road/Grove Road intersection, passing under the Mile End Green Bridge and over the canal, to the campus entrance at Westfield Way. The Lock-Keeper’s Cottage is the third building on the right].

Convenors: Prof Markman Ellis, English (m.ellis@qmul.ac.uk); Prof Colin Jones, History (c.d.h.jones@qmul.ac.uk); Prof Miles Ogborn, Geography (m.j.ogborn@qmul.ac.uk); Prof Amanda Vickery, History (a.vickery@qmul.ac.uk), Prof Barbara Taylor, English and History (b.g.taylor@qmul.ac.uk); Dr Jessica Patterson (j.patterson@qmul.ac.uk).