Reading Bodies
Delighted to share a news feature on how public engagement activity for Reading Bodies underscores the contemporary relevance of our project research on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European literature:
Renowned author Sarah Moss set for public talk on her writing and the human body – News
Join us for a discussion with author Sarah Moss as we explore the relationship between writing, health, and the human body. This free event takes place online and is open to the public – all welcome!
Read more information about the event here: Renowned author Sarah Moss set for public talk on her writing and the human body – News
Sarah told us about her interest in the Reading Bodies project: ‘I’ve been writing and thinking about literature and the body since my PhD on 18th-century travel writing, and especially in recent fiction and life writing as I explore what bodies say without and/or against words, and how literature can almost literally shape our bodies, especially in relation to girls’ reading and eating. My interest in writing, food and bodies wanders from 18th-century ships to modern and historical kitchens, from human remains in museums to ghosts on the mountains’.
Prof. Katharine Murphy and Dr Olivia Glaze will be presenting research relating to the Reading Bodies project at the forthcoming Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland 70th Annual Conference in Edinburgh, 7-8 April 2025. Our papers are part of a panel on ‘Cultural Portrayals of Illnesses and Disabilities in the Modern Luso-Hispanic World’, in collaboration with academics in Hispanic and Portuguese Studies at the University of Leeds.
Our research findings for Reading Bodies will also be presented at TONGUES: Medical Humanities across linguistic and cultural frontiers, the Northern Network for Medical Humanities Congress, 21-23 May 2025 (online).
Our forthcoming Special Issue on ‘Reading Bodies: Narrating Illness in European Literatures and Cultures (1870s to 1970s)’, guest edited by Katharine Murphy and Olivia Glaze, is scheduled for publication by the Journal of Romance Studies later in 2025. This extended volume seeks to contribute to the rapidly emerging field of Multilingual Medical Humanities and will include articles on illness narratives in Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian cultural texts. Watch this space for updates!
Thanks to all our wonderful speakers from the Universities of Belfast, Boston (USA), Cambridge, Exeter, Kent, London and Sheffield, for our second international Reading Bodies workshop, hosted by the University of Exeter on 23 May 2024. The workshop was organised by Prof. Katharine Murphy (Principal Investigator for Reading Bodies) and Dr Olivia Glaze (AHRC Postdoctoral Researcher). Prof. Nicolás Fernández-Medina (Chair of Romance Studies at Boston University) delivered a brilliant keynote on Health, Disease, and Society in the Early Ramón Gómez de la Serna. The programme included specialists in Spanish, Portuguese, English, French and German, and a hybrid Roundtable on interdisciplinary approaches to Reading Bodies in Literatures and Cultures.
Thanks to all our fantastic speakers, chairs, and Dr Patricia Novillo-Corvalán (University of Kent) for a wonderful keynote lecture. Thanks also to members of the research network and all attendees who came along on 26 April 2024 to support our first academic workshop, contributing to stimulating conversations about Reading Bodies: Narrating Illness in Spanish and European Literatures and Cultures (1870s to 1960s). The workshop was organised by Prof. Katharine Murphy (Principal Investigator for Reading Bodies) and Dr Olivia Glaze (AHRC Postdoctoral Researcher). A recording of selected papers from the workshop is available on the ILCS website.
The second academic workshop for this project will be held at the University of Exeter on 23 May 2024. All are welcome to attend – please reserve your place here. For more information about the programme, visit our events page.
The Reading Bodies Research Network has met regularly since November 2023 to discuss our project research questions, updates on our chosen topics, and development of shared interests which are grouped into 3 themes: gender and the body; society, illness and representation; transnational and decolonial perspectives. For more information, please visit our Network and People pages.
By Danielle Hipkins, Professor of Italian Studies and Film, University of Exeter
Drawing connections with the AHRC-funded project A Girl’s Eye View 2021-2024, Prof. Danielle Hipkins reflects on audience responses to the genre of the ‘sick girl’ film.
The romantic film depends on the obstacle. Otherwise, what happens? Two people meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after. That is the outcome we want, but it’s not the story we want. It’s far too short, and likely boring.
Serious, terminal even, illness presents a narratively rich obstacle, and the canon of romantic films is strewn with lovers lost, slowly and painfully, or sometimes recovered through the sheer power of love alone. There are variations in outcome, and also in the distribution of illness: maybe he’s ill, maybe she’s ill, maybe they’re both ill. Sometimes they both survive, but usually it’s just one of them.
By Dr Olivia Glaze, AHRC Post-Doctoral Research Associate, University of Exeter
References to madness, insanity, melancholia, and hysteria have long plagued the diagnoses of female mental illness. The crazed, raving, and unstable woman is a prevalent trope that has long persisted within Western literature, from Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599-1601) and Bertha Mason in Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) to Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856). Historically, madness, hysteria, and melancholia have been considered female afflictions due to an assumed inherent feminine proximity to wrecked nerves and sexual disorders – indeed, the word hysteria is derived from the Greek word “hysteron” or womb. In the late nineteenth century, understanding the ‘female’ illness of hysteria was a central focus of studies, led by the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot at his infamous Parisian asylum, Salpêtrière. Charcot transformed the hospital into an internationally renowned site of neurological teaching, with Sigmund Freud and Pierre Janet amongst his students.