Drawing upon the testimony of a range of early medieval legal texts (including Justinians Digest, the laws of the early Germanic kingdoms and subsequent legislative texts to c. 1250), chronicles (including Byzantine texts alongside those from western Europe, texts relating to the expansion of Norman power, and crusade chronicles) and records of disputes relating to assault and injury, this study will examine the incidence of cranio-facial injury, both as an offence to be punished and as a punish ment inflicted upon offenders, in early medieval Europe including Byzantium and the Mediterranean littoral. It will explore the issue through the multiple lenses of historical, medical, literary, anthropological and aesthetic approaches, testing the applicability of these and modern disability theory to early medieval sources. It will interrogate the face as a focus for medieval identity/alterity, asking how contemporary interpretation of facial injury might shift depending upon the circumstance s of its acquisition. Although work on this issue has been done for the later medieval period, and in specific contexts such as acts of cruelty in warfare, this will be the first comprehensive study of the face and its disfigurement in early medieval culture, and the first to explicitly compare practices in West and East.

This dissertation will explore changing conceptions of female depression and anxiety disorders in Britain and the United States to uncover the formative role of different health care systems in the development of psychiatric categories and their popular representation. In doing it will analyse the relationship between internal, national cultures and international cultures within the specific context of postwar gender and medical developments. This dissertation will explore changing conceptions of female depression and anxiety disorders in Britain and the United States to uncover the formative role of different health care systems in the development of psychiatric categories and their popular representation. In doing it will analyse the relationship between internal, national cultures and international cultures within the specific context of postwar gender and medical developments.