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Periodization And “The Medieval Globe”: A Conversation, Kathleen Davis, Michael Puett
Periodization And “The Medieval Globe”: A Conversation, Kathleen Davis, Michael Puett
The Medieval Globe
The period categories “medieval” and “modern” emerged with—and have long served to define and legitimate—the projects of western European imperialism and colonialism. The idea of “the medieval globe” is therefore double edged. On the one hand, it runs the risk of reconfirming the terms of the colonial, Orientalist history through which the “medieval” emerged, thus homogenizing the plural temporalities of global cultures and effacing the material effects of the becoming of the Middle Ages and its relationship to conditions of globalization. On the other hand, “the medieval globe” brings to bear a comparative focus that does not ask when and …
New Science And Old Sources: Why The Ottoman Experience Of Plague Matters, Nükhet Varlık
New Science And Old Sources: Why The Ottoman Experience Of Plague Matters, Nükhet Varlık
The Medieval Globe
Reconstructing the Ottoman plague experience is vital to understanding the larger Afro-Eurasian disease zone during the Second Pandemic. This essay deals with two different aspects of this experience. On the one hand, it discusses the historical and historiographical problems that rendered this epidemiological experience mostly invisible to previous scholars of plague. On the other, it reconstructs the empire’s plague ecologies, with particular attention to plague’s persistence, focalization, and transmission. Further, it uses this epidemiological experience to offer new insights and complicate some commonly held assumptions about plague history and its relationship to plague science.