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This VivaMente Conference explores deafness and the figure of the deaf person in the Mediterranean Antiquity and pre-modern ages through historical, medical, and socio-cultural perspectives. Despite its historical significance, this topic remains underexplored within disability history and Deaf culture studies, although recent scholarly interest in ancient disabilities has expanded to include social and cultural dimensions. In fact, in recent years, academic interest in disabilities in the ancient world has undergone a significant renewal, bringing to light new research perspectives that move beyond the traditional pathology-centered approach to encompass a broader consideration of social and cultural dynamics: see e.g. C. Laes (ed.), Disability in Antiquity, London / New York 2017; C. Laes, Disabilities and the Disabled in the Roman World. A Social and Cultural History, Cambridge 2018; C. Laes (ed.), A Cultural History of Disability in Antiquity, London 2020; A.F. Morris, H. Vogel (eds.), Disability in Ancient Egypt and Egyptology. All Our Yesterdays, London / New York 2025.
The conference is also set within a broader context of increasing recognition of Deaf culture at both public and academic levels. The official recognition of Italian Sign Language (LIS) in 2021 represented a fundamental step in affirming the rights of deaf individuals, as did the establishment of the degree program in Italian Sign Language Interpreting at the University of Parma in 2023. This program, one of only three currently active in Italy, has been founded and chaired for three years by Davide Astori, co-organizer of this conference. This academic initiative aligns with a broader scholarly trend aimed at enhancing the historical, cultural, and communicative aspects of Deaf communities.
The history of deafness and deaf individuals represents a field of study that requires an interdisciplinary approach, capable of integrating historical sources with the latest advancements in linguistics, medical history, and the sociology of disability. In this framework, we believe that tracing the historical roots of deafness—both from the objective perspective of medical history and from the subjective viewpoint of social perception—can provide a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions on the topic. The analysis of documentary and literary sources allows us to identify representations and narratives of deafness in various historical and geographical contexts, highlighting how societies have perceived, classified, and interacted with deaf individuals over the centuries.
At the same time, the conference is intended to situate deafness within the broader framework of the history of ideas. Rather than treating deafness only as a social condition or as an object of modern Deaf culture studies, the conference will examine the changing intellectual categories through which deafness was defined, explained, and classified in ancient and medieval societies. Particular attention will be paid to the historical transformation of concepts such as hearing, speech, silence, impairment, education, communication, and disability, and to the ways in which these categories were shaped by philosophical, theological, legal, linguistic, and medical discourses.
A specifically historical-medical perspective will therefore play a central role. Ancient and pre-modern medical traditions, including Greek, Latin, Byzantine, and Arabic medicine, did not merely describe deafness as a physiological condition, but contributed to broader theories of the senses, the body, cognition, language, and human difference. By bringing together social history, medical history, and intellectual history, the conference aims to show how deafness functioned as a privileged lens through which premodern cultures reflected on the relationship between body and mind, normality and impairment, voice and knowledge, individual experience and collective classification.
The goal of the conference is, therefore, to foster dialogue among scholars from different disciplines in order to construct the most comprehensive and multifaceted picture possible of deafness in premodern history. This reflection, beyond shedding light on specific aspects of ancient and medieval culture, also aims to encourage a critical debate on the persistence of certain historical conceptions in contemporary perceptions of deafness and disability as a whole.
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Event venue
Via Cardinale Pietro Maffi, 48, Pisa, Tuscany, Italy
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