Date: 8th – 9th June 2018
Location: Millburn House, University of Warwick
Registration Now Open! Cultural Histories of Air and Illness Conference, University of Warwick, 8-9th June
Air has always had an influence on the health of individuals, societies, cities, and nations. From Hippocrates’s belief that air affected the human body to Victorian medical theories on tropical climates and bad air as the source of disease, air was understood to have a direct effect on health and to be a cause of illness. With the advent of modern medicine, the role of air’s impact on human health has shifted, but remains present. For instance, current concerns about air pollution and respiratory disease, as well as the role climate change is playing on the health of ecosystems and nations, demonstrate the continued significance of air’s relationship to health. The Cultural Histories of Air and Illness Conference will span disciplines and periods to explore broadly the connections between health and the environment, and the ways in which this relationship has been constructed, debated, and disseminated.
Registration is now open: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/arthistory/research/conferences/air/registration/
Conference Programme
Friday 8 June 2018
Registration — 9:30am – 10:30am
Welcome and Plenary Lecture — 10:30am – 12:00pm
Jennifer Tucker (Wesleyan University): Dangerous Exposures: Work and Waste in the Victorian Chemical Trade
Lunch — 12:00pm – 1:30pm
Parallel Panels 1, 2, and 3 — 1:30pm – 3:00pm
1. Philosophies and Communities of Breath
James R. Cross (University College London): The Influence of Hippocrates’ On Breaths on Notions of Air and Illness in the Ancient World
Maximilian Gregor Hepach (State University of New York, Stony Brook): Feeling, Seeing, Breathing Air?: Experiencing the (In-)Conspicuousness of Air
Stephanie Shirilan (Syracuse University): Breathing (Un)Easy: Precarious Pneumatic Community in Shakespeare’s Theatre
2. Cultural Miasma
Frances Thielman (Texas A&M University): Taking Shelter from the Plague Wind: Ruskin’s Miasmatic Imagination and the Victorian Gothic Novel
Nicholas Robbins (Yale University): Ruskin’s Plague-Wind and the Climate of Art in 1884
James Glisson (Huntington Library): Miasmas around the Harbour: Atmospheric Pollution in Nineteenth-Century Brooklyn
3. Rights to Air
Rowan Boyson (King’s College, London): “The Interest in Breathing”: Outlines of a History of a Right to Air, c. 1640–1800
Laurin Goad Davis (Pennsylvania State University): The Privilege of Fresh Air
Chang Liu (Heidelberg University): Chinese Rock Music as Environmental Protest: A Call for Clean Air in Post-Olympics China
Tea and Coffee — 3:00pm – 3:30pm
Parallel Panels 4 and 5 — 3:30pm – 5:30pm
4. Medical Topography and Settlement
Alex Solomon (Ashoka University): Great Mutations in the Air: The Corpuscularization of Air and Illness
Erin Lafford (University of Oxford): “Our grosser atmosphere”: Aesthetics of Aerial Contagion in Gilpin’s Picturesque
Rachel Winchcombe (University of Manchester): “The ayre there is so temperate and holsome”: Climate, Health and the Location of Early English Colonies
Netta Cohen (University of Oxford): Palestinian Air, Jewish Identity
5. Air, Treatment, and Ventilation
Greta Perletti (Universities of Trento and Bergamo): The Purity of Air and the Medical Treatment of Consumption: Constructing the Interesting Self in Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Culture
C. Alan Short (University of Cambridge): J. S. Billings and the Conundrum of the Naturally Ventilated Hospital
Kathryn Schoefert and Caitjan Gainty (King’s College, London): “Temperature, Humidity and Movement”: The Crisis of Ventilation in Early Twentieth-Century Medicine
Julia Murphy (Independent Scholar): Room to Breathe: Fresh Air and Civil Commitment in Healthcare
Exhibition Opening for Art, Air and Illness at the Lanchester Research Gallery, Coventry University
Wine Reception — 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Saturday 9 June 2018
Registration — 9:00am – 9:30am
Parallel Panels 6 and 7 — 9:30am – 11:00am
6. Winds of Illness
Francesca Minen (Ca’Foscari, University of Venice): It’s an Ill Wind: The Relationship Among Air, Health, and Sickness in Mesopotamian Cuniform Sources
Rosa Mauro (University of Basilicata): The Relationship between Bad Air, and Health in Latin Literature: An Overview
Anna Gorokhova (Moscow State Pedagogical University): On the Question of the Plague of Athens in 430 BCE and the Delphic Oracle
7. Air Pollution and the Senses
Chloe Preedy (University of Exeter): Smoking Wit: Tobacco Consumption in the Early Modern Playhouse
Jessica Balls (University of East Anglia): “Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air”: Air Pollution and Sensory Impairment in Late Eighteenth-Century London
Emanuela Ettorre (University ‘G. d’Annunzio’ of Chieti-Pescara): A “pestilent congregation of vapours”: Unhealthy Environment and “headachy air” in the Dysphoric Visions of George Gissing
Tea and Coffee — 11:00am – 11:30am
Parallel Panels 8 and 9 — 11:30am – 1:00pm
8. Atmospheres of Health
Katherine M. Bentz (Saint Anselm College): The Power of Green: Air, Villas, and the Health of Prelates in Early Modern Rome
Olivia Meehan (University of Melbourne): Cultivating the Intellectual: Fresh Air in the Scholar’s Garden
Linn Burchert (Humboldt University): Healthy Breathing Spaces in Abstract Modern Art, 1910–1960
9. Urban Air and Contamination
Elena Serrano (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science): Urban Airs: Eighteenth-Century Anxieties and Biopolitics
Jennifer Wallis (Queen Mary, University of London): Respiratory Technologies, Contagion, and the Politics of Urban Space
Adrian Tait (Independent Scholar): “The poisonous state of the air”: Apocalyptic Environmentalism in the Work of Robert Barr and M. P. Shiel
Lunch — 1:00pm – 2:30pm
Parallel Panels 10 and 11 — 2:30pm – 4:00pm
10. Contagion and Identity
Jen Baker (University of Warwick): Demon Diseases: Contagions of Guilt in Sheridan Le Fanu’s “The Mysterious Lodger” (1850)
Alice Heeren (Southern Methodist University): Miasmas, Air, and Tropicality in Augusto Malta’s Rhetoric of Contagion
Dorothée King (Rhode Island School of Design): Unhealthy Air in Contemporary Arts
11. Dangerous Air
Coreen McGuire (University of Bristol): “The breath and sweat gather on the flannel”: Air and Personal Protection in the Mines, 1919–1945
Janne Mäkiranta (University of Turku): From Smoke to Carcinogens: Making Air Pollution a New Medium of Disease
Marijn Nieuwenhuis (University of Warwick): Atmospheric Governance: Gassing as Law for the Protection and Killing of Life
Tea and Coffee — 4:00pm – 4:30pm
Keynote Lecture and Closing Remarks — 4:30pm – 6:00pm
Richard Hamblyn (Birkbeck, University of London): The Weather in the Streets: Historical Perspectives on Urban Meteorology
For further information about the conference, including information about travel and accommodation, please visit the conference webpage: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/arthistory/research/conferences/air/
The conference is organized by Dr Amanda Sciampacone. For enquiries, please email the organizer: a.sciampacone@warwick.ac.uk. The conference is generously supported by the Leverhulme Trust, and the University of Warwick’s Humanities Research Centre and Department of History of Art.