This article examines the political role of illness in Émile Zola’s ‘La Faute de l’abbé Mouret’ (‘The Sin of Father Mouret’, 1875) in articulating the difference between a religious and a secular body. Published in the early French Third Republic (1870–1940), this novel shows the Zolian body as the nexus upon which religious and republi…[Read more]

In ‘Degeneration’ (1892), Max Nordau included Émile Zola in his theory that fin-de-siècle artists were a danger to society. According to Nordau, the ‘false science’ in Zola’s Naturalist novels would erode social progress in their alleged preoccupation with disease, sexual deviancy and amorality. This article proposes that degeneration is, how…[Read more]

Im Ayurveda bedarf die Entstehung von Epidemien einer gesonderten Erklärung, da sie nicht mit dem dort gültigen allgemeinen Verständnis der Krankheitsentstehung in Einklang zu bringen ist. Das Grundkonzept sieht vor, dass Menschen je nach Konstitution, Ernährung, Körperkraft, Gewöhnung,
Charakter und Alter für bestimmte Krankheiten anfäll…[Read more]

What follows is a talk I gave (over zoom) on June 29, 2022, for the London Rare Book School and the Institute of English Studies, University of London, and mildly revised in the transcript I posted on my blog on September 7, 2022. It was an opportunity for me to talk about the work I’ve been doing on feminist bibliography over the past couple of…[Read more]

कोविड महामारी से निपटने के लिए विज्ञान की भूमिका को सर्वोपरि बताया गया। लेकिन विज्ञान के नाम पर अनेक ऐसी चीजें भी हुईं, जिसने इस विभिषिका को निर्मित करने तथा इसे और भयावह बनाने में योगदान किया। इस दौरन सांख्यिकी के आंकड़ों को विज्ञान बनाकर प्रचारित किया गया तथा दुनिया के अधिकांश हिस्से को लॉकडाउन में धकेल दिया गया। ऐसे में सवाल यह…[Read more]

Pramod Ranjan wirft einen Blick aus Indien auf die Coronakrise und das wissenschaftliche Verständnis von der Welt, das oft erwähnt, aber meist ignoriert wird, sowie die Frage, wem das nutzt.

Die übertriebene Angst vor Covid-19 hat die menschliche Zivilisation und Kultur in Gefahr gebracht. Die Richtung, in die sich die Menschheit bewegte, br…[Read more]

Slides accompanying a talk presented at a joint research meeting of the Sushruta Project and the Classical Āyurveda Text Study Group in Vienna, July 2022.

The chair of chymiatria created at the University of Marburg was among the earliest academic initiatives aiming to integrate chymistry into the medical curriculum. If its practical applications in pharmacy and its relationship with patronage have been examined by historians, the theoretical part of the chymiatria programme still remains to be…[Read more]

Scientific diagrams could and did appear in unexpected places. This essay discusses such an example: the diagrams that the thirteenth- to fourteenth-century scholar George-Gregory Chioniades added to a manuscript of John of Damascus’s Fountain of Knowledge as part of his commentary on the text. I argue that the diagrams were a very important, if…[Read more]

This excel file contains the raw data behind the digital scholarly edition of the glosses to the first book of the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville published at: https://db.innovatingknowledge.nl/edition

In this introduction for the special section on “Exclusions in the History of Media Studies,” we begin by calling attention to the constituting role that exclusion has played in the historiography of media studies. Exclusions linked to gender, race, language, colonialism, geopolitical location, and institutionally sanctioned privilege play sub…[Read more]

16 दिसंबर 2012 को दिल्ली में हुए सामूहिक बलात्कार कांड के विरोध में हुए प्रदर्शनों ने रायसीना हिल्स को हिला कर रख दिया। अन्ना हजारे के भ्रष्टाचार विरोधी आंदोलन के बाद यह दूसरा बड़ा आंदोलन था, जिसमें उत्तर भारत का शहरी मध्यवर्ग बड़े पैमाने पर हिस्सा ले रहा था। अन्ना के आंदोलन की तुलना में इस आंदोलन में युवाओं की हिस्सेदारी बहुत ज्यादा थी।…[Read more]

This book brings sheds light on some hitherto unexplored aspects of the life and works of Dr Bhimarao Ambedkar, arguably the greatest influence on Indian society in modern times. It is a maiden attempt to provide authoritative and comprehensive information on these two topics.
Pramod Ranjan, a well-known scholar of Dalit-Bahujan ideology, has…[Read more]

Tarih boyunca kentler, kültür ve medeniyetlerin doğduğu, geliştiği ve yayıldığı yerler olmuştur. Kentler, tarihsel süreçte insanların çeşitli gereksinimlerinin ürünü olarak sürekli bir gelişme göstermiştir. Bu gelişme sürecinde hem insanlığın birikiminin gelecek kuşaklara taşıyıcısı, hem de taşıdığı uygarlık birikimi ile insanoğlunun geleceğini şe…[Read more]

In the 19th century, a unique combination of scientific, social, political and cultural factors attracted crowds of visitors from all over the world to the Dolomite Mountains. This phenomenon had its epicenter in Fiemme Valley and in the town of Predazzo, where Michele Giacomelli and his family hosted a great number of these travelers in their…[Read more]

The term cancer climax is meant as, in the narrative, the building culmination of the illness to a narrative point at which either the ill or the illness finally succumbs; the cancer climax is not necessarily synonymous with the overall narrative climax or peak of the story. Creators might place it at a separate point in their works to impart a…[Read more]

The term cancer climax is meant as, in the narrative, the building culmination of the illness to a narrative point at which either the ill or the illness finally succumbs; the cancer climax is not necessarily synonymous with the overall narrative climax or peak of the story. Creators might place it at a separate point in their works to impart a…[Read more]

Peter Jordan war von 1531 bis 1535 als Buchdrucker in Mainz aktiv. In seiner Presse entstanden zum einen gegenreformatorische Schriften wie eine Schmähschrift gegen Luther, Predigten und eine deutsche Bibelübersetzung, zum anderen aber auch deutschsprachige Wissens- und Gebrauchstexte, bspw. zum Kurbaden, zur Tintenherstellung, zur K…[Read more]