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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'When Katerina Bryant suddenly began experiencing chronic seizures, she was plunged into a foreign world of doctors and psychiatrists, who understood her condition as little as she did. Reacting the only way she knew how, she immersed herself in books, reading her way through her own complicated diagnosis and finding a community of women who shared similar experiences.
'In the tradition of Siri Hustvedt's The Shaking Woman, Bryant blends memoir with literary and historical analysis to explore women's medical treatment. Hysteria retells the stories of silenced women, from the 'Queen of Hysterics' Blanche Wittmann to Mary Glover's illness termed 'hysterica passio' — a panic attack caused by the movement of the uterus — in London in 1602 and more. By centring these stories of women who had no voice in their own diagnosis and treatment, Bryant finds her own voice: powerful, brave and resonant.'
Source: publisher's blurb
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Large print.
Works about this Work
-
Historical Figures, Archives and Australian Disability Life Writing : Reading Jessica White’s Hearing Maud and Writing Hysteria
2022
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 37 no. 1 2022;'Through examining Jessica White’s hybrid memoir Hearing Maud and my own work Hysteria: A Memoir of Illness, Strength and Women’s Stories Throughout History, I explore how archival research shapes a disabled writer’s work and written representation of the self. I particularly focus on how memoirists convey the embodied experience of disability through writing lived experience, as well as writing about disabled women they have found through archival research. I consider how writers’ conceptions of the self and body coalesce and depart from the women they are researching. I am intrigued about how, for writers, archival research shapes contemporary disability hybrid memoir writing. In addition, I suggest that imagination accompanies encounters with archival material. Writers imagine the past life of their historical subject(s), and in doing so, imagine beyond ableism. Further, a theme of institutions and how they impact individual lives throughout historical periods emerges.' (Publication abstract)
-
How Memoir Writers Are Reframing Illness
2021
single work
essay
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , January 2021;'Contemporary writers are demystifying the experience of illness, demanding health care be approached as a community issue rather than an individual battle.'
-
Hysteria as Object as Archive
2020
single work
essay
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2020; -
[Review] Hysteria
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , October 2020;
— Review of Hysteria 2020 single work autobiography -
Rebel Bodies
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , November 2020;
— Review of Show Me Where It Hurts : Living With Invisible Illness 2020 single work autobiography ; Hysteria 2020 single work autobiography 'In my early years as an undergraduate, I sat in a lecture theatre for one of many courses on women’s writing. I was a naïve deaf girl from the country and these classes set my mind fizzing. That mild, autumnal morning, I sat up straight, waiting for the lecture to start. The lesson that came, with my lecturer’s dry humour, was about the wandering womb – the notion that women’s hysteria was caused by a womb that detached and moved around the body. Its history stretches back to the Eber Papyrus, an Egyptian medical record from around 1600 BCE, which explains that to ‘cure’ a patient, the uterus needed to be lured back to its rightful place through the administration of pleasant smells near the vagina, or feral smells near the head, forcing it down. In ancient Greek, womb and word were yoked – the Greek word for ‘uterus’ is hystera – and Greek physician Hippocrites first used the term ‘hysteria’ in the fifth century BCE. He suggested that the sexually frustrated uterus caused symptoms of anxiety and suffocation, while another physician, Aretaeus, described the womb as ‘an animal within an animal’. To marginalise women – particularly recalcitrant women – these physicians deemed their bodies faulty, unreliable and irrational, and set up a contrast to their coherent male counterparts. In my lecture, I snorted with disbelief at such absurd ideas and assumed they remained in history books, like dust bunnies behind a bathroom door.'
-
Rebel Bodies
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Sydney Review of Books , November 2020;
— Review of Show Me Where It Hurts : Living With Invisible Illness 2020 single work autobiography ; Hysteria 2020 single work autobiography 'In my early years as an undergraduate, I sat in a lecture theatre for one of many courses on women’s writing. I was a naïve deaf girl from the country and these classes set my mind fizzing. That mild, autumnal morning, I sat up straight, waiting for the lecture to start. The lesson that came, with my lecturer’s dry humour, was about the wandering womb – the notion that women’s hysteria was caused by a womb that detached and moved around the body. Its history stretches back to the Eber Papyrus, an Egyptian medical record from around 1600 BCE, which explains that to ‘cure’ a patient, the uterus needed to be lured back to its rightful place through the administration of pleasant smells near the vagina, or feral smells near the head, forcing it down. In ancient Greek, womb and word were yoked – the Greek word for ‘uterus’ is hystera – and Greek physician Hippocrites first used the term ‘hysteria’ in the fifth century BCE. He suggested that the sexually frustrated uterus caused symptoms of anxiety and suffocation, while another physician, Aretaeus, described the womb as ‘an animal within an animal’. To marginalise women – particularly recalcitrant women – these physicians deemed their bodies faulty, unreliable and irrational, and set up a contrast to their coherent male counterparts. In my lecture, I snorted with disbelief at such absurd ideas and assumed they remained in history books, like dust bunnies behind a bathroom door.' -
[Review] Hysteria
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , October 2020;
— Review of Hysteria 2020 single work autobiography -
How Memoir Writers Are Reframing Illness
2021
single work
essay
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , January 2021;'Contemporary writers are demystifying the experience of illness, demanding health care be approached as a community issue rather than an individual battle.'
-
Hysteria as Object as Archive
2020
single work
essay
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2020; -
Historical Figures, Archives and Australian Disability Life Writing : Reading Jessica White’s Hearing Maud and Writing Hysteria
2022
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 37 no. 1 2022;'Through examining Jessica White’s hybrid memoir Hearing Maud and my own work Hysteria: A Memoir of Illness, Strength and Women’s Stories Throughout History, I explore how archival research shapes a disabled writer’s work and written representation of the self. I particularly focus on how memoirists convey the embodied experience of disability through writing lived experience, as well as writing about disabled women they have found through archival research. I consider how writers’ conceptions of the self and body coalesce and depart from the women they are researching. I am intrigued about how, for writers, archival research shapes contemporary disability hybrid memoir writing. In addition, I suggest that imagination accompanies encounters with archival material. Writers imagine the past life of their historical subject(s), and in doing so, imagine beyond ableism. Further, a theme of institutions and how they impact individual lives throughout historical periods emerges.' (Publication abstract)
-
Stories of Pain and Empathy
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: The Adelaide Review , August 2020;'After a year of COVID-reshuffled publication dates, two Adelaide authors – Katerina Bryant and Adelaide Review writer Kylie Maslen – find themselves in the unusual position of both having debut books, which share their lived experiences with chronic illness, hitting shelves in September.' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2021 shortlisted APA Book Design Awards — Best Designed Autobiography / Biography / Memoir designed by Alissa Dinallo