{"id":207,"date":"2014-02-20T23:13:20","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T23:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=207"},"modified":"2014-02-24T14:31:41","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T14:31:41","slug":"five-questions-fashionable-diseases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=207","title":{"rendered":"Five Questions: On the Fashionable Diseases Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"uncertainty\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to talking to scholars who’ve recently completed monographs and editions, I thought that it’d be interesting to talk with teams of scholars who are currently working on large research projects, so I contacted the Fashionable Diseases<\/a><\/em> team to find out what they’re currently up to. \u00a0Since the project team introduce themselves in the course of the interview, I’ll keep this introduction short and just thank Anita O’Connell for co-ordinating this and point out that the Call for Papers for the project’s international conference is still open; please see the last answer for further details. \u00a0If you’re interested in following the project, the website<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a> have you covered.<\/p>\n

1) What was the initial inspiration for the\u00a0Fashionable Diseases<\/i>\u00a0project?<\/b><\/p>\n

The seedling idea for this project first germinated when Clark Lawlor was researching for his volume, Sciences of Body and <\/i>Mind<\/i>, in the eight-volume anthology Literature and Science, 1660-1834<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(Pickering & Chatto, 2003).\u00a0 He included an essay from 1786 by James Makittrick Adair (1728\u20131801), a Bath society doctor, called ‘On fashionable disease’. \u00a0Clark was, and remains, fascinated by the issues raised by Adair, not least the problem of how a disease can possibly be fashionable: surely this is a paradox? \u00a0How are fashionable diseases defined, created, maintained and destroyed? \u00a0His subsequent work on representations of consumption\/tuberculosis and melancholy \u2013 two fashionable diseases par excellence<\/i> \u2013 kept the idea of fashionable disease to the fore in his critical thinking.<\/p>\n

2) How did you go about putting together a team and securing support?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b><\/p>\n

Clark was lucky to be working with colleagues interested in similar issues: in his own institution (Northumbria University) we had completed a three-year Leverhulme Trust major project entitled Before Depression, 1660-1800: The Representation and Culture of the English Malady<\/em> (see www.beforedepression.com<\/a>) directed by Professor Allan Ingram. \u00a0Dr Leigh Wetherall Dickson had been the post-doctoral research fellow on that project, and now both she and Professor Ingram form the Northumbria directorial team, along with Clark. \u00a0Clark was also lucky that, across the road (literally) at Newcastle University, an experienced and distinguished historian of eighteenth-century medicine – Dr Jonathan Andrews \u2013 was interested in similar ideas. \u00a0After a series of fruitful chats, they arrived at the idea of bidding to the Leverhulme Trust for a project which would take up some of the ideas from Before Depression<\/i> and other previous work by the members of the team. \u00a0There followed a long period of discussion and hard work between Jonathan and Clark as they co-wrote the body of the bid:\u00a0 the most challenging part of which was broadening the definition of fashionable diseases beyond the initial concept of a fashionable disease as desirable to the individual affected or afflicted by a fashionable condition. \u00a0We wanted to add two post-doctoral research fellows, one at each institution, to take forward the agendas we felt the need to address, so these posts were built into the bid. \u00a0Fortunately for us, the Leverhulme Trust liked our theme, and have kindly given us the resources to pursue it properly.<\/p>\n

3) What individual research projects are the team pursuing beneath the overall umbrella?<\/b><\/p>\n

Professor Clark Lawlor, Professor of English Literature at Northumbria University<\/a>, is writing a monograph which surveys the progress of fashionable disease as it is represented in creative literature across the long eighteenth century. \u00a0He has been working recently on Laurence Sterne\u2019s self-fashioning of his consumption, linked as it is to nervous sensibility, for the promotion of his literary celebrity. \u00a0He is also writing on the notion of \u2018authentic\u2019 fashionable disease in Anne Finch\u2019s poem on \u2018the Spleen\u2019 and Jane Austen\u2019s Persuasion.<\/i><\/p>\n

Dr Anita O\u2019Connell, Leverhulme Research Fellow in English Literature at Northumbria University<\/a>, is writing a monograph addressing literary representations of fashionable diseases.\u00a0 She is looking specifically at the relationship between illness and insight in the works of Romantic poets including Mary Robinson and Felicia Hemans.\u00a0 She is also interested in literary depictions of fashionable diseases in eighteenth-century British spa towns.<\/p>\n

Dr Jonathan Andrews, Reader in the History of Psychiatry at Newcastle University<\/a>, in close collaboration with James Kennaway (as project Research Associate), is concentrating on the patient experience of a range of fashionable diseases, in particular bilious and stomach complaints, headache, rheumatic and nervous disorders. \u00a0He is especially interested in how elite and middling class patients narrativised their illnesses, how such diseases impacted on identity and sociability, and in what ways modish tropes and models of disease trickled down the social scale.<\/p>\n

Dr James Kennaway, Leverhulme Research Fellow in the History of Medicine at Newcastle University<\/a>, is working on patient experiences of so-called fashionable diseases. \u00a0By looking at large amounts of patient testimony in contemporary diaries and letters, he aims to get a better sense of lay understandings of these conditions and the way they interacted with medical opinion.<\/p>\n

Professor Allan Ingram, Professor of English Literature at Northumbria University<\/a>, is working on illness and its representation in the work of Swift and Pope, including their relations with members of the medical profession and their own states of health. \u00a0More broadly, from across the period he is interested in attitudes towards and representations of diseases that were never likely to become fashionable.<\/p>\n

Dr Leigh Wetherall Dickson, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Northumbria University<\/a>, is interested in bringing together two previously separate strands of research for this project.\u00a0 Having written on the fashionable politics and spectacular of the Whig party and on the experience of illness, she is now interested in the spectacle of illness in relation to the celebrity body.<\/p>\n

4) What themes, issues and commonalities have emerged from the work and workshops you’ve conducted so far?<\/b><\/p>\n

Since the Fashionable Diseases<\/em> project began less than a year ago, we have hosted workshops on \u2018Hypochondria and the Refashioning of Medical Uncertainty\u2019; \u2018The Practical and Not-so-Practical Art of Fashionable Melancholia: From Black Bile to Hamlet’; \u2018\u201cMaking Up People\u201d Reconsidered\u2019, which focused on autism; \u2018Fashionable Suicides of the Romantic Era\u2019; \u2018Disability and Fashionable Diseases in Literature and Culture\u2019; and \u2018Fashion and Illness in Georgian Bath.\u2019\u00a0 We have been discussing the ways in which literature and culture, both in the eighteenth century as well as now, sometimes popularize or add a touch of glamour to what were often debilitating diseases.\u00a0 We have examined representations of eighteenth-century maladies such as hypochondria, melancholy and gout, along with the glamorization of suicide and the fashionability of visiting spas like Bath and Bristol for one\u2019s health.\u00a0 We have also started to think about trends in medicine today, about changes in the ways we represent and think about disability, and about the effects of medical labelling of people such as those with autism.<\/p>\n

Recordings of all of the workshops are available as free podcasts on our website: http:\/\/fashionablediseases.info\/podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

5) What’s coming up for the project, and how can people follow its progress and get involved?<\/b><\/p>\n

We are organizing a major international conference jointly hosted by Newcastle and Northumbria Universities, which will be held 3-5th<\/sup> July 2014.\u00a0 Our confirmed plenary speakers are Professor Helen Deutsch (UCLA)<\/a>, author of Resemblance and Disgrace: Alexander Pope and the Deformation of Culture,<\/i> who will be speaking on \u2018Diseases of Writing,\u2019 and Professor David Shuttleton (Glasgow)<\/a>, author of Smallpox and the Literary Imagination,<\/i> who will be speaking on \u2018The Fashioning of Fashionable Diseases in the Eighteenth Century.\u2019\u00a0 The conference aims to examine the role of culture and literature in creating, framing and spreading conceptions of fashionable diseases.\u00a0 Our themes include but are not limited to culture and fashionable diseases, patient experiences, the medical marketplace, spa culture, imaginary diseases and unfashionable diseases.<\/p>\n

We are currently inviting abstracts for papers, which can be emailed to enquiries@fashionablediseases.info<\/a> by 28th<\/sup> February 2014<\/b>.\u00a0 More information on the conference is available on our website: http:\/\/fashionablediseases.info<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In addition to talking to scholars who’ve recently completed monographs and editions, I thought that it’d be interesting to talk with teams of scholars who are currently working on large… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions\/219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}