TTh 11:00-12:15
Dr. Lezlie Knox
It is much more interesting to study pandemic than to live through one!
This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the second medieval plague pandemic in the context of other historical pandemics and contemporary concerns about society and disease. Between 1346-1353 what we now call the Black Death killed roughly one-third of Eurasias population (with some places experiencing mortality as high as 60%). That dramatic claim has long been known but new research has extended the plagues chronological parameters to the 13th-16th centuries, as well as recognized its global impact in China, Russia, and sub-Saharan Africa. This dynamic field thus allows us to consider historical evidence from sources traditional to the Humanities such as chronicles, literature, and art, but also draw from bioarcheology, genomics, and climate science. History majors can apply this class to either the European or Global distribution requirement with department permission.
This class also fulfills two MCC requirements that help frame our questions about pandemics: WRIT and EXP-Hum (Disco tier). Expanding Our Horizons focuses on how humans ask questions and explore the unknown. People in the later Middle Ages confronted a series of unfamiliar events that unsettled their societies including climate change, famine, and plague, as well as more familiar ones like wars and globalized trade networks. We will consider how human creativity, technologies, and inventiveness were deployed to make sense of these challenges and opportunities. We will also consider how plague changed how medieval people understood their place in the world and relationships to their community.
Assessments will focus on the process of building historical knowledge (low-stakes writing assignments and discussions), as well as developing digital skills for presenting arguments about the past. The first half of the class will include a group digital project (to learn and evaluate platforms). Over the second half, students will focus on an independent research project which can examine any topic related to disease and history (chronology and geography subject to approval). This final project will combine digital, written, and oral presentations.
MA and PhD students in all fields are very welcome to enroll in 5210. In addition to the class assignments, we will have an additional reading group focusing on historiographical debates (e.g. plague concept), especially around the first plague pandemic (aka Plague of Justinian) where the gloves were taken off long ago.