Dr. Naama Rachel Cohen Hanegbi

I study late medieval society and culture through the prism of the body, health, knowledge, faith and religious belonging. My first book studied late medieval medical understanding of the soul and the emotions and examined the links and mutual influence between medical thought and practice and ideas about sin and penance. I then turned to study the writings and history of Juan of Aviñón whose fascinating story led me to examine late 14^th century Christian healthcare in Castile. In recent years, my work has focused on cases of postpartum mental distress in the later Middle Ages. This study considers issues such as purity and time, mental instability, demonology and childbirth. I am the recipient of two Israel Science Foundation grants: 2015-2017 (ISF 1040/15) and 2020-2023 (ISF 1495/20)

I am director of The Morris E. Curiel Institute for European Studies and co-editor of Mediterranean Historical Review

Publications:

Monograph

Caring for the Living Soul: Emotions, Medicine and Penance in the Late Medieval Mediterranean (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

           Finalist, 2019, Dionisius A. Agius Prize, Society for the Medieval Mediterranean

Edited Volumes

Learning Practice from Texts: Jews and Medicine in the Later Middle Ages, special cluster, Social History of Medicine 32:4 (2019), 70pp.

With Piroska Nagy, eds., Pleasure in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018).

Articles and Chapters

"A Healthy Christian City: Christianizing Healthcare in Late Fourteenth Century Seville," Accepted for Publication in Journal of Medieval History, forthcoming 2022

"Feeling Unhealthy in Late Medieval Europe," in The Cultural History of Medicine in the Middle Ages ed. Iona McCleery (London: Berg, 2021), pp. 131-153.

“Afterword: Healing Women and Women Healers” in Gender, Health, and Healing, 1250-1550, eds. Sara Ritchey and Sharon Strocchia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020), pp. 315-323.

“Postpartum Mental Distress in Late Medieval Europe,” The Mediaeval Journal 9:1 (2019), 109-141.

“Learning Practice from Texts: Jews and Medicine in the Later Middle Ages,” Social History of Medicine 32:4 (2019): 1-11.

"Accidentia anime in Late Medieval Medicine," in Before Emotion: The Language of Feeling (400-1800), eds. Juanita Feros Ruys, Michael Champion and Kirk Essary (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 131-41.

"Bodily Pleasures: Late Medieval Medical Counsel in Context," in Pleasure in the Middle Ages, ed. Naama Cohen-Hanegbi and Piroska Nagy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 63-74.

With Piroska Nagy, “Introduction,” Pleasure in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018).

"Jean of Avignon: Conversing in Two Worlds," Medieval Encounters 22 (2016): 165-192.

"A Moving Soul: Emotions in Late Medieval Medicine," Osiris 31 (2016): 1-21.

"Mourning under Medical Care: A Study of a consilium by Bartolomeo Montagnana," Parergon 31.2 (2014): 35-54.

"Transmitting Medicine Across Religions: Jean of Avignon's Hebrew Translation of Lilium medicine," in Latin into Hebrew, ed. Gad Freudenthal and Resianne Fontaine (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 121-145.

With Uri Melammed, "Appendix: Jean of Avignon’s Introduction to his Translation of Lilium medicine, an Annotated Critical Edition and Translation," in Latin into Hebrew, ed. Gad Freudenthal and Resianne Fontaine (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 146-159.

"Pain as an Emotion: The Role of Emotional Pain in 15^th Century Italian Medicine and Confession," in Knowledge and Pain, ed. Esther Cohen, Manuela Consoni, Otniel E. Dror and Leona Toker (Rodopi: Amsterdam, 2012), pp. 63-82.

"Healing pain- Physicians and Confessors on Pain and Emotions," Zmanim, ed. Iris Shagrir and Yitzhak Hen (April, 2012): 24-31. [in Hebrew]

"The Matter of Emotions: Priests and Physicians on the Movements of the Soul," in Convergence/Divergence: The Politics of Late Medieval English Devotional and Medical Discourses, ed. Denis Renevey and Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, Special issue of Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic-Literary Studies, 72 (2009) :21-42.

"The Emotional Body of Women: Medical Practice between the 13^th and 15^th Centuries," in Le sujet des émotions au Moyen Âge, ed. D. Boquet et P. Nagy (Paris: Beauchesne, 2009), pp. 465-482.

"Emotions in Medieval Medicine: Between Theory and Practice," in Inside My Torn Blooming Body: And You Chose Life- Man, Literature and Medicine, ed. Yehosheva Bentov (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2009), pp. 215-22.

Reviews

John Christopoulos, Abortion in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2021), forthcoming in Mediterranean Historical Review, 2022.

Susan Einbinder, After the Black Death: Plague and Commemoration Among Iberian Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,  2018), forthcoming in The Catholic Historical Review 2022.

Guy Geltner, Roads to Health: Infrastructure and Urban Wellbeing in Later Medieval Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), The European Legacy (2022).

Esther Cohen, The Modulated Scream (Magnes and the Israeli Historical Society, 2019) [in Hebrew], forthcoming in Zmanim, [in Hebrew].

Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Heß, eds., The Medieval Roots of Antisemitism: Continuities and Discontinuities from the Middle Ages to the Present Day (Routledge: London, 2018), forthcoming in Zmanim, [in Hebrew].

Gerald J. Grudzen, Medical Theory about the Body and the Soul in the Middle Ages: the First Medical Curriculum at Monte Cassino (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2007) Special issue on medical humanities of The European Legacy. 16:3 (June, 2011): 392-393.

Supervision:

MA Students:

Tamar Evron – MA Thesis: The Medical Work of Avraham Ben David Caslari: A Physician in Fourteenth Century Spain, 2015-2017

Shiri Birenboim – MA Thesis: Theology of Sin and the Fall from Eden in the Medicine and Science in Causae et Curae of Hildegard of Bingen, 2014-2017

Ran Kalderon, MA Thesis (Phase 2): The German ‘Life of Mary’ as History (co-supervisor with Prof. Gadi Algazi), 2020-

Nitzan Raveh, MA Thesis (Phase 2): Between Continental Demonology and English Law: Prosecution of Witchcraft in 14th century England, 2021-

Daria Melman, MA Thesis (Phase 1) Demons East and West (co-supervisor with Dr. Ilanit Loewy Schacham), 2020-

Alma Eliaz, MA Thesis (Phase 1) Hebrew Astrology in 11th century Spain, 2021-

Dafna Yerushalmi, MA Thesis (Phase 1) Rituals in 13th century Oxford University, 2021-

Eliezer Grunzweig, MA Thesis (Phase 1) Healing on the Road to Compostella, 13th- 14th centuries, 2021-

PhD Students:

Shiri Birenboim –PhD (Phase 2) Medicine as arena of Religious Encounter in Provence, 12th – 15th centuries, 2020-

Post-Doctoral Students:

Dr. Anna Gutgartz, postdoc – Land Distribution and the Formation of Society and Local Identities in the Latin East, 2017-18

Dr. Or Hasson, postdoc - Arabic in Spanish Literature: Language Contact, Self-Perception, and the Image of the Other, 2019-2020