Modified Bodies: Working, Disciplining, and Shaping the Body in the Early Modern World

This symposium brings together scholars from across disciplines to explore how bodies were imagined, regulated, and materially transformed between the 16th and 18th centuries. Foregrounding com- parative, praxeological, and interdiscipli- nary approaches, the conference will encourage dialogue between historians of medicine, art and literature, social and cultural historians, anthropologists, and scholars of science and technology. Contributions will address themes such as embodied labor and skill, training and educational technologies, medical and surgical interventions, representations of bodily change, and the entanglement of corporeal practices with religious, politi- cal, and social norms. By doing so, the symposium aims to reframe the early modern body (or rather, bodies) as not a stable given but as a mutable, contested, and productive site of human experience. Moreover, it attempts to compare differ- ent practices of corporeal modification across the early modern world and to analyze their significance for past (and present) societies.

Program: 

Thursday, 7 May 2026

9:00–9:30 | Introduction

Vitus Huber, University of Fribourg

Session 1: Foreign Body Modifications

Chair: Claude Bourqui, University of Fribourg

9:30–10:15 | A Clever Man’s Invention? Speculations on the Chinese Practice of Foot Binding in Early Modern Travel Writing

Jasmin Mersmann, FU Berlin

10:15–11:00 | The curious case of one-breasted bodies

Alanna Skuse, University of Reading

11:15–12:00 | “Different de celuy des hommes”: French Colonial Perspectives on Body Modification and the “Bardache” in the Late Seventeenth and Early-Eighteenth Centuries

Lance Pederson, University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign

Session 2: Medical Body Modifications

Chair: Glaire Gantet, University of Fribourg

13:45–14:30 | Margaret Cavendish and the “Medicine that Could Renew Old Age” in the Early Modern Atlantic World

Edith Snook, University of New Brunswick

14:30–15:15 | The Body and the Sea: Modifying the Body Via Transformative Qualities of the Sea in Magical Healing Practices Across Islands of the Early Modern Greater Mediterranean

Carolin Schmitz, King’s College London

Session 3: Shaping Power

Chair: Olivier Richard, University of Fribourg

15:45–16:30 | Mending the Ruler's Body: Injury, Mutilation and Prosthetics in Early Modern Court Culture

Benjamin Steiner, University of Munich

16:30–17:15 | The Inca Rulers Between Institutional Sacredness and Individual Personality

Karoline Noack, University of Bonn

Keynote

Chair: Thomas Lau, University of Fribourg

18:00–19:15 | High Hair in Early Modern Europe

Evelyn Welch, University of Bristol

Friday, 8 May 2026

Session 4: Shaping Youth

Chair: Cassandre Mardonao, University of Fribourg

8:45–9:30 | The Transformative Power of Physical Exercise in Early Modern Europe

Valerio Zanetti, University of Oxford

9:30–10:15 | Teaching the Physical Practice of the Healthy Soul: Corporeal Pedagogies at Die Franckeschen Anstalten, 1698–1750

Trine Outzen, University of Lund

Session 5: Religious and Legal Body Modifications

Chair: Marco Schnyder, University of Fribourg

10:30–11:15 | Not of This World: Radical Protestantism and Bodily and Spiritual Manipulation, c. 1700

Karin Sennefelt, Stockholm University

11:15–12:00 | Legal Modifications: Judicial Facial Disfigurement in Early Modern Britain

Emily Cock, University of Cardiff

Session 6: Aesthetic and Dietetic Body Modifications

Chair: Dominic-Alain Boariu, University of Fribourg

13:15–14:00 | Shaping Beauty and Health: Concepts of Body Modification in Early Modern Medicine and Art

Romana Sammern, University of Salzburg

14:00–14:45 | Damn the Barber! The Embodied Experience of Early Modern Personal Grooming

Alun Withey, University of Exeter

14:45–15:15 | Final Discussion