Beauty Studies in the Premodern World - CHSTM Working Group.

This group provides a transdisciplinary forum for scholars engaged with the cultural histories of beautification and bodily care in the premodern global world. We approach beauty practices as historically situated techniques and materials applied to the body to maintain, enhance or restore appearance. They encompass not only cosmetic treatments and grooming routines but also forms of tacit knowledge related to health, hygiene, status and identity. While the historiography of science and medicine has increasingly recognized domestic and artisanal knowledge, beauty practices remain strikingly under-explored within these frameworks. We reposition beauty not as a superficial concern but as an historically significant domain of knowledge making using the analytic tools of a variety of disciplinary backgrounds.

Registration: https://www.chstm.org/group/beauty-studies-premodern-world

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Programme 2025

Monday, October 13, 2025, 2:00 - 3:30 pm CEST
Reading seminar with Evelyn Welch (University of Bristol): ‘Whose Hair is it Anyway?: Beauty, Health and Shaven Heads in Early Modern Europe’.

Monday, November 10, 2025, 2:00 - 3:30 pm CET
Seminar with Katharina Seidl (Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna / Ambras Castle, Innsbruck) on the "The Art of Beauty exhibition" at Ambras Castle, Innsbruck (June-October 2025)

Monday, December 8, 2025, 2:00 - 3:30 pm CET
Reading seminar with Erin Griffey (University of Auckland) on her book Facing Decay: Beauty, Aging and Cosmetics in Early Modern Europe (Penn State University Press, 2025)