Projekt

The applicant's expertise currently lies in the global and Atlantic history of ?the long 19th century". The aim of this Momentum project is to expand the applicant's research and area of expertise towards the global history of disease(s). Although the nineteenth century is often referred to as the Victorian 'Age of Pandemics', because of how diseases first affected all continents simultaneously then, various aspects of global health and sickness in the 19th century are not well researched. The applicant's interest is in histories of disease that attend to the importance of worldwide integration for the landscape of disease in the 1800s; that are environmental, as in ecologically sensitive; and that are interdisciplinary, that is, in dialogue with the natural sciences, wherever they conceive of the human body, and the senses, as historicizeable. She will conduct research both at macro and micro levels to better understand e.g., the cultural specificity of disease concepts, the historicity of pain, and death in epidemic situations. The geographical focus will be on the applicant's previous areas of expertise (i.e., Western Europe and Andean South America). Equipped with the time and funds to visit and use archives, databases, and libraries around the world, and connect with colleagues at Yale University, the applicant wants to acquire the necessary expertise to fully become a historian of disease and to contribute to a new ?materialist" history, premised upon an understanding of humans as ?material beings" and of their politics, ideas, and sociality as affected by (their) materiality.

• Prof. Dr. Stefanie Gänger

  Universität Heidelberg
  ZEGK
  Historisches Seminar
  Heidelberg