Lucia Dacome

Research Interests

My research focuses on the study of the cultural history of eighteenth-century medicine, with a special emphasis on themes at the crossroads of medical history, the history of the body, the history of the self, gender history and the history of the visual and material cultures of science and medicine. My research interests have accordingly extended to a variety of topics related to the histories of bodily displays, the self-construction and self-experience of bodies, and the relationship between medical authority and practices of health. I am currently completing a book-length project on anatomical modeling in mid-eighteenth-century Italy, tentatively titled Models of Trust. Focusing on the early stages of the practice, this project reconstructs how anatomical displays developed at the intersections of medical discourse, religious imagery, antiquarian and artistic cultures, and Grand Tour display. Moreover, it investigates the development of anatomical modeling as a reliable source of medical knowledge and a medium of medical authority, and explores the role of artisanal cultures in medical pursuits. I have an ongoing interest in the history of the relationship between body and self, with particular reference to the domains of nutrition and bodily regimen. Accordingly, I have investigated eighteenth-century dieting and weight-watching practices, accounts and representations of corpulence and the use of medical doctrines in eighteenth-century discussions of bodily resurrection.

Selected publications

- ‘Balancing Acts: Picturing Perspiration in the Long Eighteenth Century’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (in press).

- ‘The Anatomy of the Pope’, in M. P. Donato and J. Kraye (eds.), Conflicting Duties. Science, Medicine and Religion in Rome, 1550-1750 (London, the Warburg Institute, 2009), pp. 353–374.

- ‘Women, Wax and Anatomy in the “Century of Things”’, Renaissance Studies, 21/4, 2007, pp. 522–550.

- ‘Resurrecting by Numbers in Eighteenth-Century England’, Past and Present, 2006, 193, pp. 73–110.

- ‘Waxworks and the Performance of Anatomy in Mid- Eighteenth-Century Italy’, Endeavour, 30/1, 2006, pp. 29–35.

- ‘“Useless and Pernicious Matter”: Corpulence in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, in A. Carden-Coyne and C. Forth (eds.), Cultures of the Abdomen: Diet, Digestion and Fat in the Modern World (New York, Palgrave, 2005), pp. 185–204.

- ‘Noting the Mind: Commonplace Books and the Pursuit of the Self in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 65/4, 2004, pp. 603–625.

- ‘“To What Purpose Does It Think?”: Dreams, Sick Bodies, and Confused Minds in the Age of Reason’, History of Psychiatry, 15/4, 2004, pp. 395–416.

- ‘Living with the Chair: Private Excreta, Collective Health and Medical Authority in the Eighteenth Century’, History of Science, 2001, 39, pp. 467–500.

Supervisions

John Christopoulos (supervisor).

Delia Gavrus (co-supervisor with Pauline M. H. Mazumdar), completed 2011.

Vivien Hamilton (thesis advisory committee).

Brigit Ramsingh (co-supervisor with Pauline M. H. Mazumdar), completed 2011.

Sheena Sommers, History Department (thesis advisory committee).

Jaipreet Virdi (supervisor).

Erich Weidenhammer (co-supervisor with Trevor Levere).