Leeds 2023 - CFP Disease in the Medieval Islamicate World

2023

On 4 July 2023, five panels were held at the Leeds International Medieval Congress on the theme, "Disease in the Medieval Islamicate World." Eighteen scholars gathered to present the latest work on perceptions and impacts of infectious diseases in the Islamicate world from the 7th to the 15th centuries. Further information about the IMC 2023 Program can be found here: https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/imc-2023/programme/. All five sessions were recorded and can be found (for registered attendees) at the Confex website until the end of August 2023: Session 542, Origins and Impacts (Shatzmiller, Irannejad, and Rassi): https://imc-leeds.confex.com/imc/2023/meetingapp.cgi/Session/3748 Session 642, Observing and Remembering Plague (Green, Talib, and Einbinder): https://imc-leeds.confex.com/imc/2023/meetingapp.cgi/Session/3749 Session 742, Plague's Legacies (Fancy, Syed, and Blecher): https://imc-leeds.confex.com/imc/2023/meetingapp.cgi/Session/3750 Session 842, Retrieving the Corpus of Plague Treatises (Erman, Nur, Güleçyüz, and Arici): https://imc-leeds.confex.com/imc/2023/meetingapp.cgi/Session/3751 Session 942, The State of Our Questions - Round Table Discussion (Green, Peterson, Nur, Silva, Syed, and Blecher): https://imc-leeds.confex.com/imc/2023/meetingapp.cgi/Session/4308

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.

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.

The Medieval Globe, 2014

In the past decade and a half, the findings of molecular microbiology have effected a transformation in our understanding the Black Death and its history. The question 'What was it?' has been decisively resolved in favor of the pathogen Yersinia pestis. Microbiological research has also been decisive in pointing toward the Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau as the probable site of the organism's geographic origin and, more tentatively, in suggesting some chronological parameters in which key phases of that evolution occurred. These developments have laid out a challenge for medievalists, who now need to test whether these new biological narratives can better inform our understandings of the Black Death (1346-1353) and the Second Plague Pandemic more broadly defined. It also lays out a challenge for anyone who wants to apply knowledge of the Black Death to the understanding of contemporary epidemics and (re)emerging diseases. This inaugural issue of The Medieval Globe brings together scholars from many disciplines, to begin to assess how new work in the genetics, entomology, and epidemiology of Yersinia pestis, as well as new insights from archeological research, can combine with humanistic methods to allow a rethinking of the Second Plague Pandemic and its historical significance. The contributors collectively demonstrate that this phenomenon was geographically broad, chronologically deep, and ecologically complex: that it likely involved most of Eurasia and North Africa (and possibly parts beyond); that it likely extended from the 13th to the 19th centuries; and that it almost certainly involved many more intermediate hosts than the rats normally considered in plague histories. They also demonstrate that humanistic analysis has never been more crucial to reconstructing the history of the impact of this disease: genetics may be uniquely qualified to trace the history of the pathogen, but the insights of history—both traditional modes (political, religious, cultural) and newer ones (environmental, climatic, post-colonial)— allow us to see how a single-celled organism became a force shaping nearly half the globe. This issue serves as a state-of-the-field summation for medievalists and for researchers studying the world’s most lethal diseases and their modern implications. It will also provide a methodological model for global historians of any period. It is available open-access at the following link: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/1/. The following link leads to the video of a symposium that was held at the University of Illinois in January 2015 to discuss the implications of the volume: https://mediaspace.illinois.edu/media/The+Black+Death+and+BeyondA+New+Research+at+the+Intersection+of+Science+and+the+Humanities/1_g1tg61l5.

2022

My talk is about: The folkloric aspect of treating the pandemics in the Arabic medicine: Ibn al-Bayṭār as a case study

NOTE: This course was last taught in 2017. Much new work has come out on the history of plague and the late medieval pandemic since then, some of it overturning long-held truisms. Please consult my "Plague Studies" tab and the general bibliography, "The Mother of All Pandemics" for the most recent work in the field. Herewith is the final version of my syllabus for my undergraduate course, "The Black Death: Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World." The course actually teaches the whole global history of plague, from the earliest period it effected human societies (currently, the Bronze Age) up to its global presence in the world today. The course combines the latest scientific knowledge on plague, including molecular retrievals of *Yersinia pestis* from historical remains, with traditional historical documentation to understand the full impact of the pandemic waves of plague. Further details on my teaching method can be found in this blog post from 2015: https://mip-archumanitiespress.org/blog/2015/08/27/teaching-the-new-paradigm-in-black-death-studies/. The volume, *Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death*, inaugural issue of The Medieval Globe 1, no. 1-2 (Fall 2014), is available open-access here: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/1.

BJSTR, 2021

The Mediterranean Sea between east and west has recorded the highest epidemic in its history. This region is witnessing large migrations. The constant movement of population to Mediterranean caused popular pressure and formation of very large cities, after fall of Andalusia, people settled in coastal cities of North Africa and population of coastal cities increased [1].

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!

This is an informal report, published in the Medieval Academy Newsletter, of the first iteration of the National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored Seminar that was held in London at the Wellcome Library. In this 2009 Seminar, we made our first explorations of the state of the field of medieval medical history, focusing specifically on questions of how our humanistic approaches could incorporate the new work being done in the scientific fields of genetics and bioarcheology.

The Medieval Globe, 2014

Extraction of genetic material of the causative organism of plague, Yersinia pestis, from the remains of persons who died during the Black Death has confirmed that pathogen’s role in one of the largest pandemics of human history. This then opens up historical research to investigations based on modern science, which has studied Yersinia pestis from a variety of perspectives, most importantly its evolutionary history and its complex ecology of transmission. The contributors to this special issue argue for the benefits of a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach to the many remaining mysteries associated with the plague’s geographical extent, rapid transmission, deadly outcomes, and persistence. Keywords: Yersinia pestis, Second Plague Pandemic, Afroeurasia, anti-Jewish violence, bioarchaeology, biological anthropology, microbiology, historical method. This essay introduced the inaugural issue of the newly launched journal, The Medieval Globe. The General editor of the journal is Carol Symes; the guest editor of this volume is Monica H. Green. To access all the individual essays as well as the full volume, go to: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/medieval_globe/1/.