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Health, Work and Masculinity c.1800-1950

This event is co-organised by the Centre for the History of Medicine at Warwick and the Institut fur Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung in Stuttgart.

Date: 10 - 11 December 2004
Venue: Modern Records Centre
Time: 12.30pm

Programme:

Friday 10 December

12.30 – 13.45 Lunch

13.45 – 14.00
Welcome and introductions: Hilary Marland

14.00 – 15.15
Session 1: Masculinity, identity and work
Chair: Hilary Marland

Michael Meuser (Köln)
‘Masculinity, identity and work: Sociological considerations’

Vicky Long (Warwick)
‘Healthy workers, healthy citizens: serving the nation through industrial welfare’

15.15 – 15.30 Tea

15.30 – 18.00
Session 2: Men’s health and work: industries, conditions and health risks (part 1)
Chair: Hilary Marland
 
Martin Dinges (Stuttgart)
‘Men’s health and work: Some historical considerations’

Tim Carter (Birmingham)
’Kidderminster men strike against Kidderminster women: men, women and work in a Midlands  wool town 1870-1914'

Session 3: Men’s health and work: industries, conditions and health risks (part 2)
Chair: Hilary Marland

Mark Bufton and Joseph Melling (Exeter)
'Bargaining with the male body? Employers, workers and imagining the silicotic body in British compensation battles, c.1900-1945'

Martin Lengwiler (Berlin)
‘Gendering of industrial risks: Conceptions and practices of male ‘accident proneness 1880-1920 (Switzerland and Germany)’

Saturday 11 December

9.30 – 11.00Session 4: Experiences of illness and workChair: Mathew Thomson

Nicole Schweig (Stuttgart)
‘Corresponding about the body and illness: Are there any differences between workers and other men, 1800-1920?’

Brooke Whitelaw (Warwick)
”The problem of square pegs”: industrial psychology and “maladjusted” industrial workers, 1914-1945’

11.00 – 11.15 Coffee

11.15 – 12.30
Session 5: Corrupting the working man: disease and stigma

Chair: Mathew Thomson

Jürgen Schmidt (Berlin)
‘’The workers are usually healthier…than the masters’: The experience of disease in German working class autobiographies’

Pamela Dale and Joseph Melling (Exeter)
‘Dreadful Diseases: Communicating and Concealing the Occupational Health Hazards Faced by British Textile Workers, c.1880s-1940s’

12.30 – 1.45 Lunch

1.45 – 3.00
Session 6: Health care and wounded bodies

Chair: Martin Dinges

Samisksha Sehrawat (Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford)
‘Hardy Peasants from Martial Castes: Sepoys and Health Care Provision by the British Army in Early Twentieth Century India'

Manuel Richter (Max Planck Institute of History)
‘Embodying Manliness and Nation: The Everyday (Re-)Production of Male Identities in Family Correspondences of the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71)’

3.00 – 3.15 Tea

3.15 – 4.30
Session 7: Loss of masculinity? Out of the work force, invalidity and old age
Chair: Martin Dinges

Jonathan Reinarz (Birmingham)
‘Rage against the machine: The history of occupational health and the machinery question’

Andreas Weigl (Bureau of Statistics, City of Vienna)
‘Mortality and morbidity of old workers in late Habsburg Vienna’

4.30 – Discussion
Discussion leaders: Martin Dinges, Hilary Marland and Mathew Thomson

For further information please contact Molly Rogers tel ext: 72601 or email: molly.rogers@warwick.ac.uk