Five Ways in Which the Medieval is Relevant Today (original) (raw)
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NEH Summer Seminar 2012 - "Health and Disease in the Middle Ages," London, UK
http://www.public.asu.edu/\~mhgreen/healthanddisease2012/index.html “Health and Disease in the Middle Ages” was a five-week Seminar for College and University Teachers held June 24-July 28, 2012, in London, England. Based at the Wellcome Library—the world's premier research center for medical history—this Seminar gathered scholars from across the disciplines interested in questions of health, disease, and disability in medieval Europe. Support for this Seminar came from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS). We explored how the new scientific technologies of identifying pathogens (particularly leprosy and plague) could inform traditional, humanistic methods (historical, literary, art historical, and linguistic) of understanding cultural responses to disease and disability. Reciprocally, we also explored how traditional, humanistic studies of medieval medicine could inform modern scientific studies of disease, which were developing at a rapid pace thanks to new methods of DNA retrieval and analysis. Special emphasis wasmplaced on assisting participants with independent research projects relating to the History of Medicine, especially—but not restricted to—those based on unpublished primary sources.
Editors' Introduction: Pandemic Experiences and Making the Medieval Relevant
New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession, 2021
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PANDEMIC DISEASE IN THE MEDIEVAL WORLD
The Medieval Globe provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars of all world areas by focusing on convergence, movement, and interdependence. Con tributions to a global understanding of the medieval period (broadly defined) need not encompass the globe in any territorial sense. Rather, TMG advan ces a new theory and praxis of medieval studies by bringing into view phenomena that have been rendered practically or conceptually invisible by anachronistic boundaries, categories, and expectations. TMG also broadens dis cussion of the ways that medieval processes inform the global present and shape visions of the future.
Making the Medieval Relevant, 2020
This introductory chapter puts forward a case for the continuing importance of studying the European Middle Ages. The early twenty-first century is witness to a boom in popular interest in the medieval, one which is playing a significant role in shaping both politics and popular culture. Paradoxically, while this boom has led to increasing study of 'medievalism', investment in the disciplines that involve the study of the Middle Ages themselves is in relative decline with questions frequently raised about the value of such research. This chapter begins by examining the challenges that necessitate a defence of research whose key focus is the period between the fifth and the fifteenth centuries. It goes on to consider the nature of the relationship that has developed between Modernity and the Middle Ages and reflects on the changing role that medieval scholars have played in society since History emerged as a professional discipline in the nineteenth century. It poses the important question of what a focus on the medieval might offer contemporary society, arguing that a significant distinction should be drawn between 'usefulness' and 'relevance'. It contends that not only does the medieval remain relevant but that that relevance is to be found in surprising , frequently overlooked, areas that range from advancing modern medical knowledge and assessing the impact of climate change to informing contemporary political and social discourse. [The entire volume is available in open access!]
The greatest health problem of the Middle Ages? Estimating the burden of disease in medieval England
International Journal of Paleopathology, 2021
To identify the major health problems of the Middle Ages. Bubonic plague is often considered the greatest health disaster in medieval history, but this has never been systematically investigated. Materials: We triangulate upon the problem using (i) modern WHO data on disease in the modern developing world, (ii) historical evidence for England such as post-medieval Bills of Mortality, and (iii) prevalences derived from original and published palaeopathological studies. Methods: Systematic analysis of the consequences of these health conditions using Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) according to the Global Burden of Disease methodology. Results: Infant and child death due to varied causes had the greatest impact upon population and health, followed by a range of chronic/infectious diseases, with tuberculosis probably being the next most significant one. Conclusions: Among medieval health problems, we estimate that plague was probably 7th-10th in overall importance. Although lethal and disruptive, it struck only periodically and had less cumulative long-term human consequences than chronically endemic conditions (e.g. bacterial and viral infections causing infant and child death, tuberculosis, and other pathogens). Significance: In contrast to modern health regimes, medieval health was above all an ecological struggle against a diverse host of infectious pathogens; social inequality was probably also an important contributing factor. Limitations: Methodological assumptions and use of proxy data mean that only approximate modelling of prevalences is possible. Suggestions for further research: Progress in understanding medieval health really depends upon understanding ancient infectious disease through further development of biomolecular methods.
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2013
The potential for pandemic disaster in an overpopulated, overglobalized, and overexploitive human world has provided inspiration for popular science writers since the early 1990s. Such works typically combine microbiology with storytelling and may also, as in Wolfe's The Viral Storm, draw on such relevant disciplines as anthropology, entomology, zoology, and history to enrich their doomsday scenarios. 1 In these accounts, the interdisciplinary components are clearly visible. Contagion takes a different approach. Praised by William J. Bernstein on the jacket for its seamless synthesis of "pathophysiology, propulsion technology and political economy," Contagion offers a methodology that is less evidently pluralistic and more that of a historian using accepted historical approaches-principally political and economic-to answer the questions that he raises: How has long-distance trade spread epidemic disease (in humans, animals, and plants) in the past, and what measures have been taken to prevent such spread? In Harrison's accounts of most diseases, however, the pathophysiology is lightly in evidence, and "propulsion technology" might better be understood as an economic historian's normal alertness to the effects of changing methods of transport. Unlike the popular science writers, Harrison has no interest in the genesis of new diseases or of virulent disease strains, and so no need to make use of anthropology, biology, or even epidemiology in constructing his analysis. His aim is less to shock popular awareness of danger than to provide a historically rich analysis that will act as a wake up call to politicians and planners. Harrison's story begins with the Black Death in the 1340s and continues through to sars and avian inºuenza in the twenty-ªrst century. Between the Plague of Justinian (541-762 a.d.) and the Black Death, he reminds us, the world was notably free from pandemic infections. Not until the thirteenth century did populations and trade networks recover sufªciently from Dark Age depression to provide transport and fodder for opportunistic pathogens. Quarantine-the historical approach to wildªre infections-is a central player around which Harrison traces the shifting political and economic repercussions of policy. Plague dominates the earlier centuries; successive cholera epidemics in the later nineteenth century, and the resurgence of pandemic yellow fever and plague, mark the points at which both disease and commerce became "truly global" (xv). Indeed, the ªrst remotely coherent international response to plague was devised in response to the third plague pandemic of the 1890s, which caused signiªcant commercial disruption and political disagreement. Surveillance and containment were the essence of this response. Harrison meticulously charts the political and economic pressures that enmeshed such disease episodes. Self-interest,
The Medieval Globe 1 (2014) - Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death
The Medieval globe, 2014
The Medieval Globe provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars of all world areas by focusing on convergence, movement, and interdependence. Con tributions to a global understanding of the medieval period (broadly defined) need not encompass the globe in any territorial sense. Rather, TMG advan ces a new theory and praxis of medieval studies by bringing into view phenomena that have been rendered practically or conceptually invisible by anachronistic boundaries, categories, and expectations. TMG also broadens dis cussion of the ways that medieval processes inform the global present and shape visions of the future.
Medievalism in the Age of COVID-19: A Collegial Plenitude
Jan Alexander van Nahl, Lorraine Stock, Anne Berthelot, Fernando Rochaix, Sylvie Kande, Luiz Felipe Anchieta Guerra, Dustin Frazier Wood, Danièle Cybulskie, Kirsten Yri, Mary Boyle, Yoshiko Seki, Richard Utz, Jan Ziolkowski, Vincent M FERRE, Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand, Kevin Moberly
Medievally Speaking , 2020
A compilation of news, ideas, shout outs, reflections, and vignettes on the current state of Medievalism Studies by 40+ scholars from all over the world.
TMG 1 (2014): Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death, ed. Monica Green
2014
The Medieval Globe provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars of all world areas by focusing on convergence, movement, and interdependence. Con tributions to a global understanding of the medieval period (broadly defined) need not encompass the globe in any territorial sense. Rather, TMG advan ces a new theory and praxis of medieval studies by bringing into view phenomena that have been rendered practically or conceptually invisible by anachronistic boundaries, categories, and expectations. TMG also broadens dis cussion of the ways that medieval processes inform the global present and shape visions of the future.
NEH Syllabus - Health and Disease in the Middle Ages (Summer 2012)
2012
This is the syllabus for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Seminar that was run in London in 2012. Designed and taught by Monica H. Green and Rachel E. Scott, the Seminar was designed as an introduction to medieval history of medicine for scholars who hadn't received advanced training in the field, but wanted to incorporate its insights into their work. Participants included not only historians, but a physical anthropologist, literature scholars, and other humanists. It was a life-changing experience for us all!