Associate Professor Sarah Ferber

BA Hons (History), PhD (History), University of Melbourne

Email: sferber@uow.edu.au
Phone: +61 2 4221 3704
Location: 19:2041

Dr Sarah Ferber obtained a PhD in history from the University of Melbourne (1994).

Her research is in two fields of cultural history: early modern European religion and contemporary bioethics. She is chair of the UOW and local Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC, Health and Medical) and is happy to field queries about the ethics process at UOW.

Teaching and Honours/HDR supervision areas

• Modern medical and bioethics history
• European religious and cultural history

Recent Awards and Fellowships

• 2011 Associate Investigator, ARC Centre for the History of the Emotions
• 2009 All Souls College, Oxford University, Visiting Fellowship
• 2008 UQ Promoting Women Fellowship ($13 700)
• 2005 Visiting Scholar, Hastings Center, New York
• 2003 UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award ($65 000)

Memberships

• 2011 – Member, Editorial advisory Board, Preternature (www.preternature.org)
• 2009- Sixteenth-century Studies Society
• 2005- American Historical Association
• 2004- Network for Early European Research (Australian Research Council-funded major research network)
• 2001- Religious History Society of Australia
• 1994- Australian Historical Association
• 1994- International Federation of University Women
• 1989- Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern Scholars (ANZAMEMS; formerly AHMEME)

Competitive Research Funding

• 2006–2007 Medicine and culture: bioethics in historical perspective (Individual Discovery Grant) Australian Research Council Discovery $82,000
• 2004–2009 Member, Network for Early European Research (with Dr P. Sharpe and others) Australian Research Council $1,600,000 (as one of c. 50)
• 2000 Research Infrastructure Grant, individual application for purchase of medical history microfilm collection University of Queensland/ DEST $154,000

Publications

Searchable RIS publications from 2000 to date

Books

• 2004 Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern France, London: Routledge.
• 1995 Enhancing the First-year Experience. With C. McInnis et al. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, Centre for the Study of Higher Education.
• 1994 Beasts of Suburbia: Reinterpreting Cultures in Australian Suburbs. Editor, with Chris Healy and Chris McAuliffe. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Contracted

• Bioethics in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan. MS under revision, for 2012 release.
• The Body Divided: Human beings and Human ‘Material’ in the History of Modern Medicine. Editor and contributor, with Sally Wilde (Aldershot: Ashgate, appearing January 2012).
• ‘Demonic possession, exorcism and witchcraft’ for Brian P. Levack, ed, Oxford Handbook of the History of Witchcraft, appearing 2012.

Current Research

• Book in preparation: Witchcraft and Demonology in Early Modern Europe and the Atlantic World

Refereed Articles and Book Chapters

• 2009 ‘Possession and the Sexes.’ Alison Rowlands (ed.), Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 214-238.
• 2008 ‘Ecstasy, Possession, Witchcraft’ (2004), in Darren Oldridge, ed., The Witchcraft Reader, 2nd edition, London: Routledge, 2008, pp. 230-239, (excerpt from Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern France.)
• 2008 ‘The Abuse of History? Identity Politics, Disordered Identity and the “Really Real” in French Cases of Demonic Possession’, Stephanie Tarbin and Susan Broomhall (eds), Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe, Aldershot: Ashgate. pp. 29–41.
• 2007 ‘As Sure As Eggs? Responses to an ethical question posed by Abramov, Elchalal and Schenker’, Journal of Clinical Ethics, 18:1. pp. 35–48.
• 2007 ‘Some Reflections on IVF, Emotions, and Patient Autonomy’, Journal of Clinical Ethics, 18:1. pp. 53–55.
• 2005 ‘Cultivating Charisma: Elisabeth de Ranfaing and the Médailliste cult in seventeenth-century Lorraine’, F.W. Kent and Charles Zika (eds), Rituals, Images and Words: Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Turnhout: Brepols. pp. 55–84.
• 2005 ‘Delivering Demons, Punishing Wives: False imprisonment, exorcism and other matrimonial duties in a late 20th-century manslaughter case.’ With Adrian Howe, Punishment & Society, 7:2, April. pp. 123–46.
• 2005 ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Devil: Exorcism, expertise and secularisation in a late twentieth-century Australian criminal court.’ With Adrian Howe. Hans de Waardt, Juergen Schmidt, and Dieter Bauer (eds), Dämonische Besessenheit Zur Interpretation eines kulturhistorischen, Phänomens, Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte. pp. 281–92.
• 2004 ‘Miracle in Iowa: Metaphor, analogy and anachronism in the history of bioethics.’ Monash Bioethics Review, 23:3. pp. 6–15.
• 2003 ‘Possession Sanctified: The case of Marie des Vallées.’ Jürgen Beyer, Albrecht Burkardt, Fred van Lieburg and Marc Wingens (eds), Confessional Sanctity (c. 1500 – c. 1800), Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für europäische Geschichte Mainz, Abteilung abendländische Religionsgeschichte, Herausgegeben von Gerhard May, Beiheft 51, Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern. pp. 259–70. 
• 2002 ‘Reformed or Recycled? Possession and exorcism in the sacramental life of early modern France.’ Kathryn Edwards (ed.), Witches, Werewolves and Wandering Spirits: Traditional Belief & Folklore in Early Modern Europe, Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, vol. 62, Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press. pp. 55–75.
• 1997 ‘Charcot’s Demons: Retrospective medicine and historical diagnosis in the writings of the Salpêtrière school’, in Marijke Gijswit-Hofstra, Hilary Marland, Hans de Waardt (eds), Illness and Healing Alternatives in Western Europe, Routledge Social History of Medicine, London: Routledge. pp. 120–40.
• 1993 ‘Le Sabbath et son double.’ Nicole Jacques-Chaquin and Maxime Préaud (eds), Le Sabbat des Sorciers en Europe, XVe XVIIIe siècle, Grenoble: Jerôme Millon. pp. 101–09.
• 1991 ‘The Demonic Possession of Marthe Brossier, France, 1598–1600.’ Charles Zika (ed.), No Gods Except Me: Orthodoxy and Religious Practice in Europe, 1200–1600, Melbourne University History Monographs 14. pp. 59–83.
• 1985 ‘Finding the Witch Within: Two confessions of demonic crime.’ Melbourne Historical Journal. pp. 2–8.

Refereed Encyclopedia Entries

• ‘Bérulle, Pierre de.’ Richard M. Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western tradition, New York: Garland Publishing, 2006, vol. 1. pp. 113–15.
• ‘Body of the Witch.’ Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 1. pp. 131–33.
• ‘Cambrai nuns, 1491.’ Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 1. pp. 159–160.
• ‘Coton, Pierre.’ Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol 1. pp. 219–20.
• ‘Discernment of Spirits.’ Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 1. 282–83.
• ‘Duval, André.’ Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 1. 300–02.
• ‘Exorcism.’ Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 2. pp. 338–40.
• ‘Féry, Jeanne.’ Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 2. pp. 367–68.
• ‘Lille nuns.’ Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 3. pp. 652–53.
• ‘Louviers nuns.’ Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 3. pp. 672–73.
• ‘Possession, Demonic.’ Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 3. pp. 920–25.
• ‘Ranfaing, Elisabeth de.’ Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 4. pp. 950–51.
• ‘Vallées, Marie des.’ Golden (ed.), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, vol. 4. pp. 1156–57.

External Refereeing

• Brepols Publishing House
• Oxford University Press
• Preternature
• Archive for Reformation History
• Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies
• Australian Feminist Law Review
• Encyclopaedia of Witchcraft
• Health and History
• Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies
• Limina Interdisciplinary Studies Journal
• Melbourne Historical Journal
• Parergon
• Hecate
• ARC Discovery Grants

Recent Conference Presentations

• Keynote address, ‘Why Gender Matters’ Conference, Helsinki Collegium, February, 2011.  
• Issues paper, ‘Witchcraft, demonology and mental illness’, UWA, ASSA Workshop in the History of the Emotions, Perth, September, 2010
• Sixteenth-century studies conference, Geneva, 2009, ‘Witches, demons, genre and cultural forms’
• Overview commentator, final session, The Devil in Society in the Premodern World, Toronto, October 2008
• ‘Madeleine de Flers and the problem of ecstasy’, ‘The Devil in Society in the Premodern World’, Toronto, October 2008.

Selected Recent Conference organisation and Community Engagement

• 2011 Invited submission, NSW government consultation on end-of-life care
• 2009 Convener, Cultural Forms and Ideology in Early Modern Europe, upcoming 2009 conference.
• 2008 Invited submission, Queensland Government enquiry into surrogacy.
• 2008 Co-ordinator, Australian Historical Association keynote session.
• 2007 Convenor, ‘Human beings: human “materials”,’ Symposium, UQ.
• 2007 NEER conference, Perth, Panel convenor, ‘Gender and Witchcraft’.
• 2006 ARC funded Network for Early European Research cluster ‘Supernatural powers and social relations’, joint co-ordinator.
• 2006 Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern
  Scholars (ANZAMEMS, 2007): convenor for panels ‘Early Modern Ghosts’;
  ‘Miracles’.