Jessica Hogbin

Jessica Hogbin is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Syracuse University, where she studies the relationship between medicine, narratives around health, and politics in early modern Italy. Her dissertation, entitled, “Innumerable Melancholies: Medicine, Mental Health, and Human Nature in Renaissance Italy, 1450–1650,” considers melancholy as a means of comprehending Renaissance thought around mental and physical well-being, along with conceptions of human nature, the wider natural world, and scientific thought. Her dissertation engages with diverse sources, including court cases, medical treatises, letters, and necrologies, as a means of understanding the wide-reaching impact of medical thought on discussions about mental health and the mind.