Maria Conforti's intro

Hello! I'm Maria Conforti and I wish to introduce myself briefly -

I'm Italian, indeed Neapolitan; I'm a medical historian, teaching at Sapienza, Rome University.

I'm working on medicine in Italy (esp. Rome and Naples) in the long Seventeenth Century; my 'big' project is on the intersection between medicine, history and the history of the earth in Naples. This also means I have a 'professional' interest in Ischia and the Phlegraean Fields - I hope we will have some time to wander about using a very special guide from the 16th century by Giulio Iasolino, an anatomist also interested in mineral springs and baths. But probably we will all be going to the beach instead!

My interest in life and death centres in the notion of change and transformation, as it was conceptualized both for bodies and for what was called the body of the earth. The seminar in Ischia will be on surgery and anatomy, on the way bodies were observed and dissected to understand the causes of disease and death.

I'm very pleased to share the experience of the summer school with you all, also because working on the early modern period I'm expecting to learn a lot on the follow-up!