(Source: Royal Historical Society)
We learned of a call for papers
for a conference on infanticide.
Infanticide is the murder of a
newborn or an infant perpetrated most of the times, but not always, by the
mother. We welcome any study of the following topics (the list is by no means
comprehensive):
Sources, archives and
investigation fields: anthropology, archaeology, criminology, demography,
epigraphy, history, art history, crime history, law history, history of
medicine, iconography, semiotics, literature, philosophy, legal sources,
literary sources, the new frontier of biology in the humanities. Myths,
literature, the massacre of Innocents, fantasy and infanticide. Ambiguity of
the gesture: abandonment or exposure as forms of infanticide?
As we focus on the death of the
child, the abandonment which is not followed by death is excluded from the
field of reflection. The notion: the word infanticide/infanticidium varies
from its first appearance in Tertullian’s Apologeticus (v.197),
and reappears under different designations throughout time and in different
languages – homicide, abortion, parricide, suffocation, etc. Punishing
infanticide: preachers, jurists, philosophers, pedagogues, accused, accusers,
witnesses, informers.
Sociology of the agents of the
crime: mother, father, family, couple, women, maids, vagrants, prostitutes,
workers, ecclesiastics, nuns, men, legal agents, doctors and surgeons,
midwives, nurses, members of the church gens, wizards and witches…
Circumstances: Killing out of the
womb (suffocating, stabbing, throwing into the cesspool or the latrine, burying
or drowning, strangling…), sex ratio thus a theorized elimination which is set
up and, according to circumstances, applied. Chronology: the aim is to
review a topic which has been little studied from a historical viewpoint (and
not clinical or pathological) over the length of time stretching from Antiquity
to the positivist break of the modernity (mid-19th century)
The area under study is that of
Europe and colonial and postcolonial Americas, including the way those
civilizations looked at the ‘other’, but not limiting this field to that
(missionaries, travelers, etc.) Accusing the other of infanticide: antisemitism,
wars of religion, puritanism, the Affair of the Poisons, witch-hunt…The role of
religion (paganism, Catholicism and Protestantism), …All the various places
where the bodies are found.The laws in the different countries, the measures of
prevention. The law and its implementation. The changes in time. The Roman
legacy (Theodosian and Justinian codes), councils and synods of the Church
Fathers, Penitentials, Decretals… Treatises from jurists, the Encyclopedia,
Beccaria, Pestalozzi…Preventing and controlling infanticide: presumption of
innocence (declaration of pregnancy), …The question of evidence: the corpus
delicti, the investigation, forensic expertise, and therefore the role of
forensics, the sentences. Punishing and condemning: norms and practices (death
sentence, clemency of the judge, imprisonment).
Languages: We accept
contributions in French or English. (It is necessary to understand French in
order to follow the conference and participate in the
discussions). Chronological field: from Antiquity to the 19th
century. Proposals in English or French of 500 words maximum with a short
biographical note should be sent by 20 October 2019.
Please send abstracts to Dr.
Elena Taddia and Dr. Pascal Hepner: elenataddia@hotmail.fr ; pascal.hepner@univ-artois.fr
The conference proceedings will
be published
More info with the
Royal Historical Society
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