Sara Read
Biographic Data
| ID | 4101637 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sara Read |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sara |
| FAMILY NAME | Read |
| SIGNATURE | READ S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Loughborough University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6089-8324 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Curating the Health Humanities
This reflective review examines the curatorial possibilities of bringing literary scholars, archivists, makers, and artists into dialogue through an exhibition organized by the Health Humanities Research Group at Loughborough University in 2023. We reflect on how material culture, visual art, historical objects, and archives are part of our practice as literary scholars and the collaborative potential this engenders. The objects on display ranged…
Introduction Women’s Writings about Illness and Disease
“Not knowing the Disease you’ll miss the Cure”
Representations of the body, health, and healthcare practices found in Aphra Behn’s oeuvre would need no glossing for her contemporary readers, but can appear both strange and illogical to modern eyes. As Roy Porter has argued, “[t]o a large degree our sense of our bodies, and what happens in and to them, is not first-hand but mediated through maps and expectations derived from the culture at large”, and this is two way process, whereby cultural …
Reproduction
"Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day, by Nick Hopwood, Rebecca Flemming, and Lauren Kassell." Women's Studies, 49(3), pp. 341–342
Teaching Early Modern Women’s Writing in the Era of Covid-19
Over time, the course has adapted and renewed itself to not only reflect the research expertise of the lecturers delivering it, but to embrace the possibilities opened up by the digital sphere.This article explores two of the ways in which the course marries together both an ability to connect with matters presenting in this global pandemic and utilizes pedagogical techniques which work well in an online environment.Early modern people lived with…
Gushing Out Blood’
John Cleland's 1740s pornographic novel, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure repeatedly depicts and eroticises the act of defloration. As such it is a revealing illustration of what Ivan Bloch termed the 'defloration mania' of the eighteenth century. This article maps narrative events on to contemporary medical depictions of first intercourse to show the ways that the theories and ideas presented in medical and pseudo-medical texts transferred into er…
Before Midnight She Had Miscarried
Reproduction and childbirth in the early modern era have sometimes been represented as a uniquely feminine experience. Similarly, studies of domestic medicine have in the past overlooked the role that men played in domestic health care practices. This article builds on recent work that resituates men within both of these discourses by considering the ways in which men understood, discussed, and responded to the threat and occurrence of miscarriag…
Marjo Kaartinen, Breast Cancer in the Eighteenth Century
In his ground-breaking translation of The London Dispensatory (1653), Nicholas Culpeper mentioned in passing that his own mother had suffered from breast cancer. He recalled how the famous surgeon and author Dr Alexander Read had treated the disease with an ‘Oyntment of red Lead’ known for its cooling and drying properties. However, this was entirely ineffective in this case since Culpeper noted that despite the fact that the treatment was applie…
Menstruation and the Female Body in Early Modern England
1. Introduction: 'Those Sweet and Benign Humours that Nature Sends Monthly': Reading Menstruation and Vaginal Bleeding. 2. What a small Excess is called Flooding': The Language of Menstruation and Transitional Bleedings. 3. Having the Benefit of Nature': Menarche and Female Adolescence. 4. 'Full sixteen and never yet had those': Representations of Early or Delayed Menarche 5. 'Women's Monthly Sickness': Accounting for Menstruation 6. 'Wearing of …
Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, The True Medicine
True Medicine (1587) is a fascinating text for those interested in the history of medicine. The first edition was dedicated to Phillip II, and the author asks that the king accept the word of a woman ‘for I think it is of greater quality than those rendered by men’ (p. 2). From this dedication, and its epistolary appeal to a would-be patron, it is clear that this text is unlike many of the female authored medical texts that follow it into print i…
No prominent works on this page.
Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, The True Medicine
True Medicine (1587) is a fascinating text for those interested in the history of medicine. The first edition was dedicated to Phillip II, and the author asks that the king accept the word of a woman ‘for I think it is of greater quality than those rendered by men’ (p. 2). From this dedication, and its epistolary appeal to a would-be patron, it is clear that this text is unlike many of the female authored medical texts that follow it into print i…
Menstruation and the Female Body in Early Modern England
1. Introduction: 'Those Sweet and Benign Humours that Nature Sends Monthly': Reading Menstruation and Vaginal Bleeding. 2. What a small Excess is called Flooding': The Language of Menstruation and Transitional Bleedings. 3. Having the Benefit of Nature': Menarche and Female Adolescence. 4. 'Full sixteen and never yet had those': Representations of Early or Delayed Menarche 5. 'Women's Monthly Sickness': Accounting for Menstruation 6. 'Wearing of …
Marjo Kaartinen, Breast Cancer in the Eighteenth Century
In his ground-breaking translation of The London Dispensatory (1653), Nicholas Culpeper mentioned in passing that his own mother had suffered from breast cancer. He recalled how the famous surgeon and author Dr Alexander Read had treated the disease with an ‘Oyntment of red Lead’ known for its cooling and drying properties. However, this was entirely ineffective in this case since Culpeper noted that despite the fact that the treatment was applie…
Before Midnight She Had Miscarried
Reproduction and childbirth in the early modern era have sometimes been represented as a uniquely feminine experience. Similarly, studies of domestic medicine have in the past overlooked the role that men played in domestic health care practices. This article builds on recent work that resituates men within both of these discourses by considering the ways in which men understood, discussed, and responded to the threat and occurrence of miscarriag…
Gushing Out Blood’
John Cleland's 1740s pornographic novel, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure repeatedly depicts and eroticises the act of defloration. As such it is a revealing illustration of what Ivan Bloch termed the 'defloration mania' of the eighteenth century. This article maps narrative events on to contemporary medical depictions of first intercourse to show the ways that the theories and ideas presented in medical and pseudo-medical texts transferred into er…
“Not knowing the Disease you’ll miss the Cure”
Representations of the body, health, and healthcare practices found in Aphra Behn’s oeuvre would need no glossing for her contemporary readers, but can appear both strange and illogical to modern eyes. As Roy Porter has argued, “[t]o a large degree our sense of our bodies, and what happens in and to them, is not first-hand but mediated through maps and expectations derived from the culture at large”, and this is two way process, whereby cultural …
Reproduction
"Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day, by Nick Hopwood, Rebecca Flemming, and Lauren Kassell." Women's Studies, 49(3), pp. 341–342
Teaching Early Modern Women’s Writing in the Era of Covid-19
Over time, the course has adapted and renewed itself to not only reflect the research expertise of the lecturers delivering it, but to embrace the possibilities opened up by the digital sphere.This article explores two of the ways in which the course marries together both an ability to connect with matters presenting in this global pandemic and utilizes pedagogical techniques which work well in an online environment.Early modern people lived with…
Introduction Women’s Writings about Illness and Disease
Curating the Health Humanities
This reflective review examines the curatorial possibilities of bringing literary scholars, archivists, makers, and artists into dialogue through an exhibition organized by the Health Humanities Research Group at Loughborough University in 2023. We reflect on how material culture, visual art, historical objects, and archives are part of our practice as literary scholars and the collaborative potential this engenders. The objects on display ranged…
Medicine (8 works) · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes (5 works) · History (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Art (4 works) · History (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Internal Medicine (3 works) · Literature (3 works) · Art history (2 works)