E5. Roundtable Geographies of Medicine in the Early Modern World: An Exploration in Pedagogy
Chair: Lauren Kassell, European University Institute Pablo Gómez, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Marta Hanson, Johns Hopkins University
Harun Küçük, University of Pennsylvania
Elaine Leong, University College London
Chris Parsons, Northeastern University
Alisha Rankin, Tufts University
This roundtable examines the diverse health cultures and ideas of the body across the premodern world, with a focus on how best to teach a global history of early modern medicine to students. The six roundtable participants represent a range of geographies of early modern medicine: Latin America, China, the Ottoman Empire, North America/Atlantic World, and Europe. We also teach students at a variety of levels: undergraduates, graduate students, medical students. The goal of the roundtable is to spark a conversation that will lead to a co-written chapter, aimed at introductory students, on the geographies of early modern medicine.
The roundtable focuses on three key questions: how can we teach histories of medicine across the early modern world without “dumbing down” the nuances of the material? How can we foster connections and dialogues across the rich and diverse historiographies? What kind of resources might we create to make this topic accessible to undergraduates and medical students? We hope to provoke a lively conversation on the possibilities and perils of trying to teach truly global histories of early modern medicine.
* Develop knowledge and understanding of the rich geographies of early modern medicine
* Develop strategies for teaching global histories of early modern medicine to students
