Re-orienting Ancient Medicine Courses

This pedagogy workshop is aimed at (past, current, and would-be) instructors of ancient medicine, science, and technology courses who would be keen to integrate material from the pre-modern Middle East. Popular and more academic narratives often equate ancient medicine with Greco-Roman medicine and frame its study as an originist history of a monolithic western medical tradition. When these narratives introduce content from the pre-modern Middle East, such as from Assyria or the medieval Islamicate world, they define the contribution of Middle Eastern knowledge-makers in terms of their anticipation or preservation of a western science.

This workshop will discuss ways of foregrounding the theories and actors of pre-modern Middle Eastern science, technology, and medicine without rendering them subservient to a hegemonic "western tradition". Moreover, we will review a range of primary and secondary source materials that we utilize in our own teaching of these subjects. Questions or concerns can be addressed to cwebster@ucdavis.edu. Co-sponsored by the Society for Ancient Medicine and the UC Davis Early Science Workshop.

Please register here:
https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_M-fHevFTRIuOA7fS2Z4epQ