Dr Chryssanthi Papadopoulou Online talk | Thursday 30 March, 17:00-17:40
What somatic symptom disorders (SSDs) occurred in young women passing from puberty to sexual maturity in Ancient Greece and the late 19th century Europe? What were the somatic responses to motherhood and to the irretrievable loss of their maidenhood?
This online talk, organized in the framework of the European Union Project ReInHerit, will present classical Greek, female somatoform disorders, as these are described in the Hippocratic texts, vis-a-vis hysteria in fin de siècle Vienna and Paris. It examines the sociocultural contexts that gave rise to these female maladies, as well as to their medical (mis)diagnoses and proposed treatments. It demonstrates the doctors’ limited understanding of the various, dissimilar desiderata of their patients, and by extension of the numerous, unalike causes of these disorders. It finally shows how several women sufferers instinctively opted for finding ways of curing themselves.
Dr. Chryssanthi Papadopoulou was a Harvard CHS Fellow in Comparative Cultural Studies in 2021-2022 and conducted research on women’s somatic symptom disorders from antiquity to nowadays. She has served as an Assistant Professor of Maritime Archaeology in the University of the Peloponnese (2020-2023) and the Assistant Director of the British School at Athens (2014-2019). Before that she was the A.G. Leventis Fellow in Hellenic Studies at the British School at Athens. She studied Archaeology and Art History (BA Hons) in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Maritime Archaeology (MSc) in the University of Southampton and received her PhD on classical Athenian maritime deities from King’s College London. She is a board member of the Hellenic Institute of Marine Archaeology, and has excavated shipwrecks in Cyprus, and Greece since 2005. Her research and publications focus on Greek religion and sanctuaries, the embodiment of religious rituals, shipwreck studies, and the anthropology of the sea.
Registration form: https://bit.ly/40gi9wF Info: 2107294220 The talk will be held in English.
