Please choose 1 of the following options to complete for this assignment.
Black Death
Watch my overview mini-lecture on the Black Death (this is a recorded version of what I covered in class): https://youtu.be/4xyt1C7n69s and Slides.
Choose one of the following articles to explore:
- “The Black Death and its Consequences for the Jewish Community in Tàrrega”
- “Healing Options during the Plague: Survivor Stories from a Fourteenth-Century Canonization Inquest”
- “A Black Death mass grave at Thornton Abbey: the discovery and examination of a fourteenth-century rural catastrophe”
- “The enslaved wet nurse as nanny: the transition from free to slave labor in childcare in Barcelona after the Black Death (1348).”
Write-up your answers to the following questions and be sure to include a citation with the write-up for the article you chose.
- What is the field(s) of research?
- What evidence/sources are used?
- What is the article’s thesis statement? How well do they support their argument?
- What’s the geographic and temporal scope of the research?
- 2 interesting/significant facts and things you learned from the article. Please include quotations from the article for these points.
- What’s your main takeaway from the article? What is most relevant or connected to what we’re experiencing today?
Medieval World
Watch/read these 2 pieces:
- Dr. Carol Symes, “Medievalism, White Supremacy, And The Historian’s Craft,” 2017.
- Dr. Cord Whitaker, “Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking—and Why It Matters,” 2019.
Choose one of the following articles to explore from The Public Medievalist’s series on Race, Racism, and the Middle Ages.
Write-up your answers to the following questions and be sure to include a citation with the write-up for the article you chose.
- What is the scope of the article?
- What is the article’s thesis statement?
- What connections do you see between your article of choice, the Symes essay, and the Whitaker lecture? Please use direct quotations to support your points.
- What is your main takeaway about medieval history, race and racism in the U.S.?