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The Torments and Travails of Jamestown: Early 17th century settler colonial body in pain

Thursday 13 February 2025, 6.00PM

Speaker(s): Eva Johanna Holmberg, University of Helsinki

This paper investigates embodied, emotional and sensory history perspectives to the ‘body in pain’ in early colonial Virginia, and how early Jamestown colonists understood, expressed, and circulated accounts about their embodied experiences of painful illness,
bodily injuries, and cures to them in their private letters, manuscript accounts, and printed promotional texts about the colony.

I will explore three perspectives on pain: 1) embodied and sensory experiences of painful illnesses and hunger, 2) accidents and injuries, and 3) humoral and chemical medicine and pain. These three contexts will be explored via three individuals ‘in pain’: colonial leaders George Percy, John Smith, and Thomas West, Lord de la Warr. The main problem is how to access historical experiences of pain from textual and archaeological sources. It is proposed here that a ‘multipronged’ approach is the best studying the situated, yet ‘mobile body’, whilst keeping a close eye on textuality and concrete materiality of the varied and conflicting source material.

  • This research forms part of a Research Council of Finland project ‘Experiencing Agony: Pain and Embodiment in the British Atlantic World, 1600-1900’

Dr Eva Johanna Holmberg (she/her), FRHistS, is a University Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, History, and Art at the University of Helsinki. Her research interests include cross-cultural encounters, Anglo-Ottoman exchanges, and the cultural
history of mobility and travel. She is the author of three books: Jews in the Early Modern English Imagination: A Scattered Nation (Ashgate, 2012), British Encounters with Ottoman Minorities in the Early Seventeenth Century: ‘Slaves’ of the Sultan (Palgrave,
2022), and Writing Mobile Lives, 1500-1700 (Cambridge Elements in Travel Writing, 2024, open access).

Refreshments (tea and coffee) provided 15 minutes before the advertised start time. All welcome!

Register to attend online

Location: The Treehouse, Berrick Saul Building

Admission: In-person and online