Simplifying Access: Metadata for Medieval Disability Studies
Guerra, Francesca (University of California, Santa Cruz)
PNLA Quarterly, Volume 74, no. 2 (Winter 2010)
Abstract
In December, 2006, the University of York hosted the first conference devoted to the new field of medieval disability studies (Baswell, 2006, n. p.). The conference, “Historicising Disability: The Middle Ages and After” included a number of international scholars in Anglo-Saxon, medieval and Renaissance disability including Irina Metzler, author of Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment During the High Middle Ages, c. 1100-1400 (2006) which is considered the “first general study of medieval disability” (Baswell, 2006, n. p.). In 2009, the University of Nottingham held a smaller conference, Disease and Disability in Northern Europe 400-1200 (http://disease.nottingham.ac.uk/doku.php), which “explore[d] sickness and the status of the afflicted from a range of different angles, such as archaeology, palaeopathology—the study of ancient diseases—as well as linguistics and historical evidence [of burial grounds]”. As Christina Lee, one of the co-organizers of the Disease and Disability in Northern Europe conference, states, “there [wa]s this idea that in the medieval period, disabled and disfigured babies were smothered at birth, but that is not the case—the evidence suggests the birth of a child, any child, was something celebrated even when the disability was severe.”
Simplifying Access: Metadata for Medieval Disability Studies
PNLA Quarterly, Volume 74, no. 2 (Winter 2010)
Abstract
In December, 2006, the University of York hosted the first conference devoted to the new field of medieval disability studies (Baswell, 2006, n. p.). The conference, “Historicising Disability: The Middle Ages and After” included a number of international scholars in Anglo-Saxon, medieval and Renaissance disability including Irina Metzler, author of Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment During the High Middle Ages, c. 1100-1400 (2006) which is considered the “first general study of medieval disability” (Baswell, 2006, n. p.). In 2009, the University of Nottingham held a smaller conference, Disease and Disability in Northern Europe 400-1200 (http://disease.nottingham.ac.uk/doku.php), which “explore[d] sickness and the status of the afflicted from a range of different angles, such as archaeology, palaeopathology—the study of ancient diseases—as well as linguistics and historical evidence [of burial grounds]”. As Christina Lee, one of the co-organizers of the Disease and Disability in Northern Europe conference, states, “there [wa]s this idea that in the medieval period, disabled and disfigured babies were smothered at birth, but that is not the case—the evidence suggests the birth of a child, any child, was something celebrated even when the disability was severe.”
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