Diagnosing History

Katherine Byrne is Lecturer in English at Ulster UniversityJulie Anne Taddeo is Research Professor of History at the University of MarylandJames Leggott is Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at Northumbria University

• Introduction – Katherine Byrne, Julie Anne Taddeo, and James LeggottPart I: Early modern professions and disease1 Golden rats and sick empires: portraying medicine, poverty, and the bubonic plague in La Peste – José Ragas, Patricia Palma, and Guillermo González-Donoso2 Wellness, womanhood, and witchcraft in Outlander: televised historical portrayals of women’s shifting roles in medicine – Jennifer M. Fogel and Serenity Sutherland3 Avoiding ‘the faddlings of Dr Choake’: the professionalisation of medicine in Poldark – Barbara Sadler 4 ‘Infection was Mary’s reward’: Harlots and televising the realities of eighteenth-century English prostitution – Kristin Brig and Emily J. ClarkPart II: Pioneers, heroes, and villains5 Feminist doctors and medicine women: the lady physician in the American western – Jacqueline D. Antonovich6 The Black doctor on the historical small screen: African American physicians in television period dramas – Kevin McQueeney7 When women were nurses: gender, nostalgia, and the making of historical heroines – Aeleah Soine8 Heroic childbirth and Call the Midwife – Katherine Byrne9 ‘Physician, heal thyself’: the good doctor of When the Boat Comes In – James LeggottPart III: Dissecting the body10 ‘And when you touched my naked body … your fingertips running along my flesh … this was abuse, not science’: Victorian medicine in Showtime's Penny Dreadful – Julie Anne Taddeo11 The surgical gaze in the operating theatre: early twentieth-century surgery on screen – Marie Allitt12 Of gods, monsters, and men: science, faith, the law, and the contested body and mind in The Frankenstein Chronicles and The Alienist – Andrea WrightPart IV: 'Treating' the mind13 Bad or mad?: Branwell Brontë, mental health, and alcoholism in Sally Wainwright’s To Walk Invisible – Sarah E. Fanning and Claire O’Callaghan14 ‘After I left England, they thought I was mad. But they taught me to use it – now it’s a gift’: representations of mental illness in the period dramas of Stephen Knight – Dan Ward15 Bitter living through science: melodramatic and moral readings of gay conversion therapy in A Place to Call Home – Gordon R. Alley-YoungAfterword – Jessica MeyerIndex