Deconstructing the Body in Antiquity and Modernity

Esther Eidinow is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on ancient Greek culture, especially religion and magic. Most recently, she originated and led the Virtual Reality Oracle project (see vroracle.co.uk). Her latest monograph is Metamorphosis, Landscape, and Trauma in Greco-Roman Myth.Georgia Petridou is Reader in Ancient Greek History at the University of Liverpool. She works on Classical literature, Greek epigraphy, history of Greek and Roman religion, ancient medicine in its socio-cultural contexts, and medical humanities. Her most recent work includes a monograph entitled Medicine and Mysteries in Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi: The Mysian Patient, and a bilingual New Pauly Supplement volume entitled, Ancient Religion in Context co-edited with J. N. Bremmer and J. Rüpke.

• Introduction: Multiple Bodies? Perspectives and Paradoxes - Georgia Petridou and Esther Eidinow; Part I. Fragmentation and Fusion; 1. The Body Demonic, The Body Cosmic - Nicola Denzey Lewis; 2. Mythologising the “Other” Kidney: Compromised Bodies, People, and Settings - Ciara Kierans and Seán Columb; 3. Fragmented Bodies, Fragmented Stories: Martyrs’ Relics as Sources of Narratives in Post-Roman Hispania - Antón Alvar Nuño; 4. Imagined Bodies: The Role of Unrealized Events in The Narrative Construction of The Post-Amputation Body - Emily Heavey; Part II. Foci, Frontiers, Trans-Formations; 5. Can Amulets be Queer? A Neutral Look at Graeco-Roman Erotic and Healing Amulets - Irene Salvo; 6. What the Face Reveals: The Experience of Pain - Simon van Rysewyk; 7. Medical Interpreting: Old Practice New Metaphors - Teodora Manea; 8. The Ritual Body in Crisis: Aelius Aristides’ Body and the Antonine Plague - Georgia Petridou; 9. Roman Unusual Burials and the Materiality of the Corpse: Personhood, Bodily Transformation, and the Self - Rafael S. Barroso-Romero; 10. Reflection on Seven Pieces - Fred Jones; Epilogue - Lennard Davis.