Friday 8 June 2018

Registration — 9.30am – 10:30am (Millburn Foyer)

Welcome and Plenary Lecture — 10:30am – 12:00pm (Millburn A0.28)
Jennifer Tucker (Wesleyan University): Dangerous Exposures: Work and Waste in the Victorian Chemical Trade

Lunch — 12:00pm – 1:30pm (Millburn Foyer)

Parallel Panels 1 and 2 — 1:30pm – 3:00pm

1. Medical Topography and Settlement (Millburn A0.26)
Chair: Nicholas Robbins (Yale University)
Erin Lafford (University of Oxford): "Our grosser atmosphere": Aesthetics of Aerial Contagion in Gilpin's Picturesque
Rachel Winchcombe (University of Manchester): "The ayre there is so temperate and holsome": Climate, Health and the Location of Early English Colonies

2. Rights to Air (Millburn A0.28)
Chair: Marijn Nieuwenhuis (University of Warwick)
Rowan Boyson (King's College, London): "The Interest in Breathing": Outlines of a History of a Right to Air, c. 1640–1800
Laurin Goad Davis (Pennsylvania State University): The Privilege of Fresh Air
Julia Murphy (Independent Scholar): Room to Breathe: Fresh Air and Civil Commitment in Healthcare

Tea and Coffee — 3:00pm – 3:30pm (Millburn Foyer)

Parallel Panels 3 and 4 — 3:30pm – 5:00pm

3. Philosophies and Communities of Breath (Millburn A0.26)
Chair: Coreen McGuire (University of Bristol)
James R. Cross (University College London): The Influence of Hippocrates' On Breaths on Notions of Air and Illness in the Ancient World
Maximilian Gregor Hepach (State University of New York, Stony Brook): Feeling, Seeing, Breathing Air?: Experiencing the (In-)Conspicuousness of Air
Stephanie Shirilan (Syracuse University): Breathing (Un)Easy: Precarious Pneumatic Community in Shakespeare's Theatre

4. Air, Treatment, and Ventilation (Millburn A0.28)
Chair: Jennifer Wallis (Queen Mary, University of London)
Greta Perletti (Universities of Trento and Bergamo): The Purity of Air and the Medical Treatment of Consumption: Constructing the Interesting Self in Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Culture
C. Alan Short (University of Cambridge): J. S. Billings and the Conundrum of the Naturally Ventilated Hospital
Kathryn Schoefert and Caitjan Gainty (King's College, London): "Temperature, Humidity and Movement": The Crisis of Ventilation in Early Twentieth-Century Medicine

Exhibition Opening for Art, Air and Illness at the Lanchester Research Gallery, Coventry University
Wine Reception — 6:00pm – 8:00pm
(Complimentary travel to the Lanchester Research Gallery will be provided to delegates)

Saturday 9 June 2018

Registration — 9:00am – 9:30am (Millburn Foyer)

Parallel Panels 5 and 6 — 9:30am – 11:00am

5. Winds of Illness (Millburn A0.26)
Chair: James R. Cross (University College London)
Rosa Mauro (University of Basilicata): The Relationship between Bad Air, and Health in Latin Literature: An Overview
Anna Gorokhova (Moscow State Pedagogical University): On the Question of the Plague of Athens in 430 BCE and the Delphic Oracle

6. Air and the Senses (Millburn A0.28)
Chair: Erin Lafford (University of Oxford)
Jessica Balls (University of East Anglia): "Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air": Air Pollution and Sensory Impairment in Late Eighteenth-Century London
Emanuela Ettorre (University 'G. d'Annunzio' of Chieti-Pescara): A "pestilent congregation of vapours": Unhealthy Environment and "headachy air" in the Dysphoric Visions of George Gissing
Dorothée King (Rhode Island School of Design): Unhealthy Air in Contemporary Arts

Tea and Coffee — 11:00am – 11:30am (Millburn Foyer)

Parallel Panels 7 and 8 — 11:30am – 1:00pm

7. Atmospheres of Health (Millburn A0.26)
Chair: Rowan Boyson (King's College, London)
Katherine M. Bentz (Saint Anselm College): The Power of Green: Air, Villas, and the Health of Prelates in Early Modern Rome
Olivia Meehan (University of Melbourne): Cultivating the Intellectual: Fresh Air in the Scholar's Garden
Linn Burchert (Humboldt University): Healthy Breathing Spaces in Abstract Modern Art, 1910–1960

8. Cultural Miasma (Millburn A0.28)
Chair: Amanda Sciampacone (University of Warwick)
Jen Baker (University of Warwick): Demon Diseases: Contagions of Guilt in Sheridan Le Fanu's "The Mysterious Lodger" (1850)
Frances Thielman (Texas A&M University): Taking Shelter from the Plague Wind: Ruskin's Miasmatic Imagination and the Victorian Gothic Novel
Nicholas Robbins (Yale University): Ruskin's Plague-Wind and the Climate of Art in 1884

Lunch — 1:00pm – 2:30pm (Millburn Foyer)

Parallel Panels 9 and 10 — 2:30pm – 4:00pm

9. Urban Air and Contamination (Millburn A0.26)
Chair: Marie Thébaud-Sorger (CNRS/Maison Française d'Oxford)
Elena Serrano (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science): Urban Airs: Eighteenth-Century Anxieties and Biopolitics
Jennifer Wallis (Queen Mary, University of London): Respiratory Technologies, Contagion, and the Politics of Urban Space
Adrian Tait (Independent Scholar): "The poisonous state of the air": Apocalyptic Environmentalism in the Work of Robert Barr and M. P. Shiel

10. Dangerous Air (Millburn A0.28)
Chair: Amanda Sciampacone (University of Warwick)
Coreen McGuire (University of Bristol): "The breath and sweat gather on the flannel": Air and Personal Protection in the Mines, 1919–1945
Janne Mäkiranta (University of Turku): From Smoke to Carcinogens: Transnational Movement of Air Pollution Research in the Case of Finland
Marijn Nieuwenhuis (University of Warwick): Atmospheric Governance: Gassing as Law for the Protection and Killing of Life

Tea and Coffee — 4:00pm – 4:30pm (Millburn Foyer)

Keynote Lecture and Closing Remarks — 4:30pm – 6:00pm (Millburn A0.28)
Richard Hamblyn (Birkbeck, University of London): The Weather in the Streets: Historical Perspectives on Urban Meteorology