Myriam Iuorio

 am a first year PhD student at the IHPST. Before moving to Toronto, I obtained a BA and a Master in the History Department at the University of Florence, where I focused on the study of the cultural and intellectual history of eighteenth-century Europe. In my past research, I considered the role of diplomatic networks in the circulation of literary, medical, and scientific knowledge. In my proposed doctoral research, I would like to expand my interest in the history of early modern trans-national encounters and exchanges by investigating the history of disability and its medical understanding in global perspective. I intend to explore how European views of ability and disability affected the encounter and confrontation with non-European cultures, by considering the writings of Italian missionaries, merchants, and physicians who travelled along trade routes, focusing on Africa and the Atlantic World. I am interested in exploring how ideas of beauty and deformity intersected with emerging notions of disability and race. I also plan to investigate different interpretations of disability and their positive versus negative connotations in religious as well as medical contexts. Historians who have started to investigate disability in the early modern period have concentrated on Europe and largely adopted a national focus. In my research I would like to explore how ideas of disability were constructed and elaborated in a global context and what role did medicine and natural inquiry play in their definition.