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Photos from the Newberry Symposium: Disease and Disability in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Panel on Disease and Disability in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Unfortunately, I was unable to remain for the entire symposium, but the first half was great (not a surprise, the Newberry’s symposia tend to rank in the “superb” area), so here is an almost tragically short report.
Christopher Baswell, Walton O. Schalick III, and Edward Wheatley all spoke on disability in the Middle Ages, with emphases on Political, Medical, and Religious aspects respectively. While none of them directly addressed art per se, the area is still relatively unexplored in Art History, so I include this as a signpost for future studies.
Dr. Schalick gave an interesting overview of the changing attitudes toward the disabled, children in particular, as the medical field developed. He made some particularly interesting and unexpected points on how the marketplace acted as a determining factor in these attitudes (rather than imprecisely quoting, I will lead you to his recently submitted Marketing Medicine: Medical and Pharmaceutical Regulation in Paris, 1200-1400. I am unsure of the publication date). This seemed timely in light of the current uneasiness with big pharmaceutical/health insurance lobbyists in DC, and current arguments about attitudes toward the terminally ill.
Dr. Wheatley’s observations were an interesting twist on sin and disability in that he discussed disability treated as a blessing during the Middle Ages and the healing of such being considered a punishment. Dr. Wheatley’s book, Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability, comes out in April.
For fellow archivists: Dr. Baswell particularly drew from images of the crippled while discussing the relationship of the disabled with royalty and how disability was viewed in the royal body. During his talk he lamented how extremely difficult it is to find images of the disabled, and that it seems that they are overlooked even in digital database tagging efforts. His example was an image from the Huntington Library, Des cas des nobles Hommes et Femmes with a catalogue description that included every figure and symbol in the image except a legless man on crutches who he described as the “only gazing figure,” meaning the only figure that was actively engaged with other figures/symbols in the illumination. I bring this up not only because we should be more careful in our catalog descriptions of images (as an archivist I’m embarrassed for the omission), but also because we need to standardize image metadata. I realize that there are things “in the works,” (Art Counsel’s own work is part of this process) but the effort is tragically behindhand. Perhaps we should start an image archivists guild or something…
Christopher Baswell, Unknown, Edward Wheatley
Walton O. Schalick III
