Postgraduate Course: Medicine, Religion and Gender in the Middle Ages (PGHC11647)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course explores medicine, religion and gender in early medieval European societies between 600 and 1100 CE. Informed by comparison with other premodern medical cultures, the course re-evaluates the relationship between religion and healing, and the gendering of medical knowledge and practice, in a period that sits awkwardly within the wider history of medicine. |
| Course description |
The centuries between 600 and 1100 CE do not fit neatly into the wider history of medicine and this course examines why. One big challenge is that practically all surviving writing about medicine has been mediated through religious institutions, especially male monasteries, which has sometimes led to older caricatures of medical knowledge stagnating in the cloister and enveloped by 'dark age' superstition. The course thaws out this frozen picture by grappling with two connected issues. What was 'monastic medicine', and how did it vary across space and change over time? How were medical knowledge and practice gendered in early medieval European societies?
We will explore what happened to medicine when it entered religious institutions; what work medicine did for monks, nuns and others; how the gendering of medical knowledge interacted with the gender dynamics of religious institutions and networks; and how we can get at wider medical cultures and healing economies outside the walls of monasteries through texts produced and preserved within them. Because monastic medicine was neither uniquely European nor Christian, we will also grapple with these issues in light of comparative and global approaches to premodern medicine and healing. We will consider comparable historical dynamics, such as the gendering of medical authority in Islamicate societies or the role of medicine and healing in socially embedding Buddhist monasteries in medieval China. We will also evaluate the implications of ideas and applicability of approaches from scholarship on various Eurasian medical cultures across the global middle ages for understanding medicine, religion and gender in this particular space and time.
The study of History inevitably involves the study of difficult topics that we encourage students to approach in a respectful, scholarly, and sensitive manner. Nevertheless, we remain conscious that some students may wish to prepare themselves for the discussion of difficult topics. In particular, the course organiser has outlined that the following topics may be discussed in this course, whether in class or through required or recommended primary and secondary sources: sexual violence; abortion and miscarriage. While this list indicates sensitive topics students are likely to encounter, it is not exhaustive because course organisers cannot entirely predict the directions discussions may take in tutorials or seminars, or through the wider reading that students may conduct for the course
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should have at least 3 History courses at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this). We will only consider University/College level courses. Applicants should note that, as with other popular courses, meeting the minimum does NOT guarantee admission.
**as numbers are limited, visiting students should contact the Visiting Student Office directly for admission to this course ** |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 22,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
174 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
80 %,
Practical Exam
20 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Coursework:
1000-word essay plan (20%)
4000-word essay (60%)
Non-written skills:
Seminar participation (20%) |
| Feedback |
In addition to the assessed essay plan, students will be encouraged to discuss their research and writing of the final assessment with the course organiser. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- demonstrate command of the history of medicine in pre-modern societies;
- appropriately select, evaluate and deploy primary source material to generate their own insights;
- critically evaluate relevant scholarship and situate their own work in relation to that scholarship;
- ask scholarly questions and develop scholarly arguments in oral and written form.
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Reading List
Hsiao-wen Cheng, Divine, Demonic, and Disordered: Women without Men in Song Dynasty China (Seattle, 2021)
Monica H. Green, Making Women's Medicine Masculine: The Rise of Male Authority in Pre-Modern Gynaecology (Oxford, 2008)
Monica H. Green, 'Gendering the history of women's healthcare', Gender & History 20.3 (2008), 487-518
Ann Heirman and Mathieu Torck, A Pure Mind in a Clean Body: Bodily Care in the Buddhist Monasteries of Ancient India and China (Gent, 2012)
Peregrine Horden, Cultures of Healing: Medieval and After (Abingdon, 2019)
Meg Leja, Embodying the Soul: Medicine and Religion in Carolingian Europe (Philadelphia, 2022)
Pernilla Myrne, Female Sexuality in the Early Medieval Islamic World: Gender and Sex in Arabic Literature (London, 2019)
Dana Oswald, Conceiving Bodies: Reproduction in Early Medieval English Medicine (Manchester, 2024)
Ahmed Ragab, Piety and Patienthood in Medieval Islam (London, 2018)
Sara Ritchey, Acts of Care: Recovering Women in Late Medieval Health (Ithaca, 2021)
Sara Ritchey and Sharon Strocchia (eds), Gender, Health and Healing, 1250-1550 (Amsterdam, 2020)
C. Pierce Salguero, Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China (Philadelphia, 2014)
Sara Verskin, Barren Women: Religion and Medicine in the Medieval Middle East (Berlin, 2020) |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Analyse, synthesise, critically and methodically appraise thoughts to break down complex problems into manageable components.
Be able to communicate complex ideas and arguments in writing.
Enhance verbal communication - including listening and questioning.
Use information and knowledge effectively in order to abstract meaning from information. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Zubin Mistry
Tel:
Email: Zubin.Mistry@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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