As in previous years, the project members have been involved in teaching courses and lectures. For example, at the start of 2024 (Jan–Feb) Daniel taught a well-attended and lively course at Tampere University exploring ‘Disability Histories of Britain and the Atlantic World’. This examined evidence and examples from Britain and the wider Atlantic world to illuminate major themes, trends, perspectives, and approaches in disability history. Focusing in particular, but not exclusively, on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the course considered the relevance of this period to the emergence of modern understandings and experiences of bodily and cognitive difference and included lots of discussion on religion.
Riikka gave lectures (in Finnish) in which she also discussed disability and lived religion in courses ‘Introduction to History of Society’ and ‘Fear and Anxiety in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period’. For example, in the latter she talked about anxieties related to becoming ill, injured, mad and disabled as well as about the ways religion and religious practice were turned to in order to cope with disabilities, find hope or cure, and to alleviate fears and anxieties in general in early modern Sweden and Finland. This history course was attended by students from Tampere University and Tampere classical upper secondary school.
News image credits: Detail of a painting by Dominic Serres 1787: The ‘St George’ with Other Vessels, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_%27St_George%27_with_Other_Vessels_RMG_BHC2224.tiff