Call for Papers: Crossing Colonial Historiographies

The Centre for Health, Medicine, and Society: Past and Present, at St. Anne's College, Oxford University, has announced a Call for Papers on Crossing Colonial Historiographies: Histories of Colonial and Indigenous Medicines in Transnational Perspective, 16-17 Sept., 2008.

Here is an excerpt from the conference website:

The field of history of medicine during the age of empire has expanded considerably in the last two decades. Engagement with different kinds of colonialism and with varied indigenous socio-political cultures has led to a wide range of approaches to colonial medicine and indigenous modes of healing. The increasingly distinct historiographic traditions of colonial and indigenous medicines emerging in the various regions formerly ruled by different colonial powers have developed quite independently from each other. This has reinforced a geo-cultural divide and a regrettable lack of conceptual interaction between those working on North/East/West/South Africa, South Asia, South East Asia, Austral-Pacific and the Americas respectively. Moreover, conceptual and methodological debate between scholars specialising on British, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Dutch and German colonial contexts in different regions rarely occurs, as journals tend to focus on specific European traditions and researchers at medical history conferences find themselves usually streamed into separate groups and panels (e.g. Asian or South African, Chinese or South Asian etc).

300-word abstracts are dune June 1, 2008.  Further details are available on the website.