Sabine Arnaud
Research Group Director
Ph.D.
Residence: November 1, 2010 - January 31, 2016
Profile
Sabine Arnaud’s current research focuses on the instrumentalization of the question of deafness in the construction of various disciplines, and the study of conflicting new conceptions of the human and of normality/abnormality. Studying deafness from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth century, her project traces the crucial role that language has played in how we define humanity, and analyzes the many ways in which this relationship has been articulated (voice and sign language). The new research project follows the completion of a monograph entitled Writing, Roles, Knowledge: The Construction of Hysteria as a Medical Category Between 1670 and 1820.
A U.S. doctorate in Comparative Literature (City University of New York) in cotutelle with a French thesis in History and Civilizations (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) and graduate theses in Philosophy and Art History (Paris VIII-Vincennes-Saint Denis) have guided Sabine Arnaud’s approach to visual and textual documents. She has been a Max Planck Research Group director since November 2010.
Before joining the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Sabine Arnaud was an assistant professor at Texas A&M University. Her research on hysteria has previously been supported by a Milton Brown Dissertation Fellowship and fellowships from the New York Academy of Medicine, the Société Internationale d’Etude des Femmes de l’Ancien Régime, the Countway Library of Harvard University, the Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University, the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin, and The Institute for the Medical Humanities of The University of Texas.
Current work:
The Writing of Deafness and the Construction of Norms in Western Europe and the United States (17th to 19th Centuries)Selected publications
Sabine Arnaud. De la Construction d’une catégorie médicale entre 1575 et 1820, L’hystérie : écritures, rôles, savoirs. Paris: Editions de l'EHESS, forthcoming.
Sabine Arnaud. "Ruse and Reappropriation in the French Eighteenth Century: La Philosophie des vapeurs by C. J. de B. de Paumerelle. " French Studies (65 2011)
Sabine Arnaud. "Une Maladie indéfinissable? L'hystérie, de la métaphore au récit, au XVIIIe siècle. " Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 1 (2010)
Sabine Arnaud (Editor/s). La Philosophie des Vapeurs. Paris: Mercure de France, 2009.
Sabine Arnaud. "Medical Writing, Philosophical Encounters, and Professional Strategy: The Defiance of Pierre Pomme. " Gesnerus - Swiss Journal of the History of Medicine and Science (66 2009)
Talks and presentations
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