Department FieldsAnnouncementsFrom 2010-2012 I am an ACLS New Faculty Fellow at Caltech
|
Medieval European History; History of Medicine
Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara; 2009
Office: HSSB Hours:
Nicole Archambeau is a social and cultural historian of healing. She takes an integrative approach to the history of healing in the later Middle Ages, focusing on the intersection of medicine and religion. She is finishing a book that explores how sufferers experienced and tried to heal sadness, desperation, and anxiety during the Hundred Years War and the first waves of plague. (more...)She teaches courses on epidemics in the pre-modern world, and medicine, magic, and miracle. She has published essays on the emotional impact of war in the fourteenth century and testimonies about early waves of plague found in canonization inquests.
Research Communities- The Mediterranean Seminar
I attended the NEH Summer Seminar on Networks and Knowledge in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Mediterranean and joined this research community in 2012
- Disease and Healing in the Middle Ages
I attended this NEH Summer Seminar in London organized by Monica Green and Walton Shalick in 2009 and have continued to participate in the history of medicine community
Current projects- Souls under Siege: Plague, War, and Spiritual Anxiety in the Fourteenth Century
A book-length project exploring fourteenth-century testimonies about surviving mercenary invasion, epidemic, and the spiritual anxiety surrounding confession.
- Healing Madness in the Middle Ages
An article-length project on the presentation of madness in canonization inquests, co-authored with Heidi Marx-Wolf at the University of Manitoba
- God Helps Those Who Help Themselves: Negotiating a Miracle in Fourteenth-Century Provencece
An article-length project that explores sufferers' knowledge about pursuing medical and miraculous healing.
Publications- His Whole Heart Changed: Political Meanings of a Mercenary's Emotional Transformation
This article places the spiritual transformation of a Gascon mercenary in the political atmosphere of the Hundred Years War and on-going crusades of the late fourteenth century. It appeared in the collection, Politiques des émotions au Moyen Âge, edited by Damien Boquet and Piroska Nagy, and published by SISMEL
- Healing Options during the Plague: Survivor Stories from a Fourteenth-Century Canonization Inquest
This essay explores canonization inquest witness testimony about the first two waves of plague in Provence. It includes women's testimony and indications that by the second wave, people knew what illness they had and sought diverse healing options. In the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Winter 2011
- Remembering Countess Delphine's Books: Reading as a Means to Shape a Holy Woman's Sanctity
This essay explores how witnesses shaped Delphine de Puimichel's weeping, vigils, and fasting by linking these activities to her reading. By putting St. Augustine's Soliloquies and St. Bernard's Steps of Humility in her hands, they linked her saintly behavior to the Church Fathers and helped counter accusations that she was a beguine. In Writing Medieval Women's Lives, edited by Amy Livingstone and Charlotte Newman Goldy, Palgrave 2012.
- Tempted to Kill: A Miraculous Cure for a Mother's Homicidal Temptation after the Death of Her Daughter
This essay explores the noblewoman, Mathildis de Sault's, desire to kill the wetnurse present when her infant daughter died. The temptation influenced the health of her body and soul and was only relieved by a visit with the holy woman, Countess Delphine de Puimichel. It will appear in the collection, History of Emotion, 900-1700, edited by Elena Carrera, forthcoming from Brill.
Awards and Fellowships- ACLS New Faculty Fellowship, 2010-2012
- S. Stephen Marcus Innovation in Teaching Award, 2009
- Camargo Foundation Fellowship, 2007
I had the good fortune to spend 5 months in Cassis, France doing research in Marseilles and Aix-en-Provence
- Lawrence Badash Prize for Writing in the History of Science, 2007
Awarded for an essay called: “The Cycle of Negative Emotions: Comparing Sufferers’ and University Trained Practitioners’ View of Tristitia”
- UC Regents' Special Fellowship, 2002-2007
Courses I Teach- Plague in the Pre-modern World
- The Civilization of the High Middle Ages 1050-1350
- Women, The Family, and Sexuality in the Middle Ages
- Academic Writing for Undergraduate and Graduate Students
|
