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Disability and Care in Medieval and Early Modern France

Event
A person in a white nightgown lies against a large pillow in a bed with white sheets and a red blanket as four people in red capes and hats look on, as well as a person in blue robes with a bishop's cap. A person in white apparel attends the sick person reclining in the bed.

Fri., May 1, 2026, 8:30 a.m.–3 p.m.Sat., May 2, 2026, 9:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

General: $50; Society of Fellows, Members & Readers: $30 (students and research fellows free) Optional lunch: $20 (each day)

Haaga Hall

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Gathering an interdisciplinary group of scholars, this two-day conference will explore premodern embodiment, disability, affect, and care in Francophone literature, history, medicine, art history, disability studies, and critical theory.
Conferences

With origins in the 1970s and 1980s, the flourishing of disability-focused research in Anglophone literature and culture has established rich fields of inquiry that now span the humanities. Scholars of France and Francophone literature and culture have turned more recently to exploring the experiential and affective dimensions of disability.  Deeply entwined with questions of embodiment and feeling is the matter of care—tending and being tended to, care for oneself, and care for others. Gathering an interdisciplinary group of scholars who work transculturally and transhistorically, this conference aims to offer a capacious exploration of premodern embodiment, disability, affect, and care in Francophone literature, history, medicine, art history, disability studies, and critical theory. 

Funding provided by The Dibner Research Fellow & Exhibition Endowment.

Key Details

  • Conference registration covers both days and includes general admission to The Huntington.
  • Lunch reservations close on April 27 at noon. A limited number of lunch tickets will be available for purchase at the conference.
  • Doors to the conference hall open 30 minutes before registration. 

For questions about this event, email researchconference@huntington.org or call (626) 405-3432.

Top image: Book of Hours, use of Rome [France], 1500-1513. | The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. 

Conference Schedule

Schedule is tentative and subject to change. 

Friday, May 1, 2026

8:30 a.m. | Registration and coffee 

9 a.m. | Welcome and introduction

  • Shannon McHugh (Assistant Director of Research, The Huntington), Alani Hicks-Bartlett (Brown University) & Cynthia Nazarian (Northwestern University)

9:15 a.m. | Session 1: Translation and Voice: Disability, (Ad)vocacy, Community 

  • Moderator: Vincent Bruyère (Emory University)
  • Julie Singer (Washington University of St. Louis)
    “Careless People: Disability as Collateral Damage in the Livre de forme de plait”
  • Jonathan Hsy (George Washington University)
    “Translating Gender and Disability: Christine de Pizan and Thomas Hoccleve in Dialogue in the Huntington Archives”  

10:45 a.m. | Break

11 a.m. | Session 2: Animal/Animation: Metamorphosis and Bodily Care

  • Moderator: Alani Hicks-Bartlett (Brown University)
  • Peggy McCracken (University of Michigan)
    “Caring for a Cow: Affect, Empathy, and Embodiment in Medieval French Io Stories”
  • Antonia Szabari (University of Southern California)
    “Different Ways of Falling Off a Horse in Sixteenth-Century France” 

12:30 p.m. | Lunch

2 p.m. | Session 3: On Constraint, Care, and Agency

  • Moderator: Cynthia Nazarian (Northwestern University)
  • Tom Conley (Harvard University)
    “Crunch Time: Ambroise Paré on Debilitation”
  • Jennifer Row (University of Minnesota) 
    “Carewashing, Carcerality, and Crip4Crip Care in the Hôtel Royal des Invalides (1670)”

Saturday, May 2, 2026

9:30 a.m. | Registration and coffee

10 a.m. | Day 2 intro: Alani Hicks-Bartlett (Brown University) & Cynthia Nazarian (Northwestern University)

10:15 a.m. | Session 4: Bodily Management: Social/Political/Personal

  • Moderator: Alani Hicks-Bartlett (Brown University)
  • Kathleen Perry Long (Cornell University)
    “Jean Bodin’s Necropolitics and the Politics of Care in The Island of Hermaphrodites (1605)” 
  • Timothy Hampton (University of California, Berkeley) 
    “Reading, Gaiety, and Care of the Body”

11:45 a.m. | Lunch

1 p.m. | Roundtable discussion

  • Moderator: Cynthia Nazarian (Northwestern University)
  • Vincent Bruyère (Emory University)
    “Andry’s Orthopaedia (1741) and the Genealogy of Non-Benevolent Care” 
  • Andreea Marculescu (University of Oklahoma) 
    “Witchcraft, Vulnerability, and Porous Bodies in Early-Modern French Demonology”

2:30 p.m. | Break

2:30 p.m. | Concluding Remarks: Disability, Affect, and Care: Connections and Future Directions