Project Brainstorming

While brainstorming project ideas, I was moved towards the idea of fasting and health spas. I love reading Conde Nast Traveler for travel inspiration, and recently read numerous articles on detox spa retreats and spas for weight loss. Many hotels used methods pioneered by Franz Mayr and Otto Buchinger. This made me curious about the histories of fasting, healing, and retreat practices.

Ángel notes that one of the challenges of transnational history is identifying the space where ‘transnational transfers, flows, exchanges and entanglements take place’ when not bound by pre-defined nation-states and other political boundaries. For a transnational perspective in my project, I would form my topic of interest not around just spas and fasting techniques in Germany. Rather, I could make the ‘portal of globalization’ within my study health spas across the globe, and how they exchange practices through scientific developments. This would make a much more compelling read, as my initial research shows these spas adopting Ayurvedic, Spanish, and European Naturopathic techniques, implying cross-cultural flows of ideas and practices not limited to the boundaries of Germany.

I am curious about the intentions behind these spaces, why the spas have become so popular as forms of holistic health treatment. This of course led me to imagine different intentions behind fasting, such as the differences between fasting as a health-based versus religious or sacrificial process. Aside from medical versus spiritual intentions behind fasting, I am also interested in famine and fasting as political action, such as through hunger strikes.

One of the difficulties I have come across so far is translation. Some of the pioneers of modern fasting spas are German, and all their research is also in German. I can’t read them but believe they might help me in my research or at least in narrowing down my focus. I am curious what historians do in these situations, as I’m sure the simple google translate is not appropriate.