EGENIS seminar: Tracking a Concept through a Medical Humanities Perspective: The Strange Case of the “Parthenos” , Dr Eftihia Mihelakis (Brandon University)

Working with concepts in the field of medical humanities means recognizing that discourses, be they cultural or medical, have an indubitable role to play in how we think, imagine, speak or remain silent about different domains of inquiry and how these thought processes erupt, devolve or mutate over time. In this talk, I will trace the emergence of the Ancient Greek concept of “parthenos” as it pertains to illness as well as lack or excessive knowledge by documenting its transformations in humoral medicine, medical jurisprudence, legal texts, and will conclude on sketching out future directions for this research.