L'analyse scientifique des recettes de la Renaissance

The Scientific Analysis of Renaissance Recipes: Medicine and the Body in the German Material Renaissance

Lecture by Stefan Hanß


24 February 2023 (5.30pm) TBC

GHIL and Online

https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures

The Scientific Analysis of Renaissance Recipes: Medicine and the Body in the German Material Renaissance The ‘material Renaissance’, historians have argued, was an age of experimentation, and recipes were at the heart of this cultural movement. New collaborations between the humanities and the sciences allow for novel insights into Renaissance recipe cultures, and more specifically the degree of material experimentation and engagement by ‘recipe practitioners’. Scientific analysis and thorough historical contextualization of the chemical fingerprints of recipe users offer a new understanding of material cultures, medicine, and the history of the body in early modern Germany. Which ingredients were used? How were they used, and what for? Which substances were altered, and why? And what can be said about their impact on the human body? This lecture focuses on early modern Augsburg and discusses topics as wide-ranging as haircare and toothache. It contributes to research on recipes, as well as to the new history of material practices, early modern medicine, and material and medical practitioners in early modern Germany.

Stefan Hanß is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Manchester and the winner of a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award (2019) as well as a Philip Leverhulme Prize in History (2020). Hanß works on cultural encounters and global material culture, currently with a focus on the history of hair and featherwork, and on establishing new collaborations between the humanities and the sciences. In September 2023, Hanß takes on the role as Deputy Director and Scientific Lead of the John Rylands Research Institute Manchester. His research has been widely published in, among others, History Workshop Journal, Past & Present, Renaissance Quarterly, and The Historical Journal. He is the author of two monographs on the Battle of Lepanto and Narrating the Dragoman’s Self in the Veneto-Ottoman Balkans, c.1550–1650 (Routledge, 2023). Hanß has co-edited Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500–1800) (2014), The Habsburg Mediterranean, 1500–1800 (2021), Scribal Practice and Global Cultures of Colophons, 1400–1700 (2022), and, most recently, In-Between Textiles, 1400–1800: Weaving Subjectivities and Encounters (2023). He is currently in the final stage of writing a new book on the early modern history of hair.

This lecture will take place as a hybrid event at the GHIL and online via Zoom. In order to attend this event, please register via Eventbrite to take part in person or online.