Noli me tangere: Verbal Contact and Physical Violence in the Middle Ages
Organizers: Leland Grigoli (Brown University) and Charlie Steinman (Columbia University)
What did it take to add insult to injury? What function did verbal violence serve in a public or private setting? How might an insult lead to blows, or change the meaning of physical touch? To explore these questions, this sub-theme focuses on the connections between verbal and physical violence in the medieval world. Engaging scholars from a diverse range of specialties, such as the history of emotions, legal and gender history, Jewish studies, Latin and vernacular philology, and even onomastics, it provides a comparative means to think about contact between mental imaginaries and physical realities across the middle ages, offering new insights into the socio-cultural relationship of thought, word, and deed.
