Re-orienting Ancient Medicine Courses

Aileen Das (University of Michigan) and Jay Crisostomo (University of Michigan) 

April 22, 2021 @ 4-5pm EST via Zoom 

This pedagogy workshop is aimed at (past, current, and would-be) instructors of ancient medicine, science, and technology courses who would be keen to integrate material from the pre-modern Middle East. Popular and more academic narratives often equate ancient medicine with Greco-Roman medicine and frame its study as an originist history of a monolithic western medical tradition. When these narratives introduce content from the pre-modern Middle East, such as from Assyria or the medieval Islamicate world, they define the contribution of Middle Eastern knowledge-makers in terms of their anticipation or preservation of a western science. This workshop will discuss ways of foregrounding the theories and actors of pre-modern Middle Eastern science, technology, and medicine without rendering them subservient to a hegemonic "western tradition". Moreover, we will review a range of primary and secondary source materials that we utilize in our own teaching of these subjects. Questions or concerns can be addressed to cwebster@ucdavis.edu. Co-sponsored by the Society for Ancient Medicine and the UC Davis Early Science Workshop.

Click here for a transcript of the video.

A list of resources mentioned during the conversations can be found here.

Disability in the Ancient World

Hannah Silverblank (Haverford), Debby Sneed (CSULB) and Bet Hucks (U. Heidelberg) 

March 22 @ 12:30–2pm EST via Zoom

This workshop is aimed at instructors (faculty and graduate student alike) who are, have, or are planning on teaching a course on ancient medicine or related areas. The goals of the workshop are twofold and intertwined. The first goal is to offer frameworks for thinking about, identifying, and incorporating disability in the ancient world into medicine courses. Assuming that “being (dis)abled” is a set of value-judgements contingent on time, culture, place, environment, and ideology, how might we define “disability” in the ancient world? What research methodologies and models of embodiment provide meaningful ways of understanding lived experiences of disabilities and disablement? What sorts of medical, material, and social evidence for disability accommodations emerges from various parts of the ancient Mediterranean? What, if any, are the lessons these ancient responses can impart to contemporary perspectives and practices as classicists? This last question is central to the second aim of the workshop. What are the best pedagogical practices we as instructors can employ for ensuring our classrooms are as accessible as possible (with respect to both the physical and digital classroom)? In this way we hope to wed both our concern for the past with an awareness of the issues of the future. Our three panelists will provide various approaches into teaching ancient source material as well as pedagogical principles like UDL (Universal Design in Learning), which should aid instructors in designing courses that are conceptually adept for the subject and grounded in disability justice-informed accessibility. Co-sponsored by Society for Ancient Medicine and the University of Cincinnati Department of Classics