PLEASE NOTE ROOM CHANGE FOR TONIGHT'S RESEARCH SEMINAR - TO BE HELD IN THE NEW LAW BUILDING- SEMINAR ROOM 344 - TIMES STILL THE SAME Debbie Castle Administration Assistant Unit For History and Philosophy of Science Room 441 Carslaw Bldg F07 University of Sydney NSW 2006 Tel: + 61 2 9351 4226 Fax: + 61 2 9351 4124 Email: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Office Hours: Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays Dear all, You are warmly invited to upcoming Monday's research seminar. Please note the location! Hans Pols Monday 23 March, 6.15 pm Creating patriots: The moral cure and new identities in Revolutionary France Lisa O'Sullivan, Senior Curator of Medicine, Science Museum, London; History Dept., Birkbeck College. Location: New Law School seminar room 100, University of Sydney [The New Law School building is the very new building in between the Carslaw Building and Fisher Library, adjoining Victoria Park. The lecture is held in the triangular building at the front.] Abstract During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, French military doctors were faced with epidemics of nostalgia. Soldiers suffering from homesickness were dying from the trauma of the loss of 'home', rather than in the defence of the homeland. Such conflicting loyalties directly challenged the political ethos of the new Republic. The strategies of French military doctors dealing with the condition make it clear that they considered nostalgia an important diagnosis which allowed them to argue for a new therapeutic model, the moral treatment. At the same time its cure allowed them to assert their central role as conduits between state and people, able to assess the nature and forms of government capable of engaging the loyalties of the population. This paper examines the implications of the successful cure of nostalgia, specifically its re-theorisation as a mental illness. It argues that in the revolutionary context, nostalgia became read as the preserve of French people who had not yet 'learnt' to become citizens. As such it became a testing ground for the potential malleability of the citizen, and the voluntary nature of identity. The body 'cured' of nostalgia became one educated in finding its place within a social and political system rather than a particular physical landscape. Dr Hans Pols, Senior Lecturer Unit for History and Philosophy of Science F07 Carslaw University of Sydney NSW 2006 AUSTRALIA Tel. +61 2 9351 3610 Fax +61 2 9351 4124 / Main office: 9351 4226 CRICOS Provider No 00026A http://www.usyd.edu.au/hps/
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