In Episode 3, Gašper Jakovac is hosting Prof. Ann Thomson (EUI) to discuss the writings of Constantin-François Chasseboeuf, comte de Volney (1757–1820), a French anti-religious philosophe, who in the 1780s wrote two extremely hostile accounts of the Ottoman Empire. Travels Through Syria and Egypt (1787), and Considerations on the War with the Turks (1788) were written in a long tradition of European writing which saw the Turks steeped in ignorance, barbarism, and fanaticism. Find out more about how the plague highlights Volney’s anti-Muslim prejudice in today's episode.

In our second episode, Vigdis Andrea Baugstø Evang guides us into the world of late medieval medical culture as they explore Jean Jacme Jacobi’s Regimen contra pestilentiam (Rules against the Plague). What did southerly winds and plague have in common? Why did Pesta, a ghastly personification of the plague, carry broom and rake as she prowled the Norwegian countryside? What were the causes of epidemic outbreaks according to a medieval physician? Find out in today’s episode!

Hosted by Ian Hathaway

In the first episode of Experiencing Epidemics podcast, Gašper Jakovac discusses an anonymous plague poem written in the wake of the 1636 Newcastle plague epidemic. This outbreak was far from the worst in the history of England, but for Newcastle, the north-eastern port city, it was devastating. What might poetry tell us about the people’s experiences of the plague and the prevailing attitudes towards infectious disease in early modern England? Get ready for thundering verse and God’s unquenchable wrath!

Hosted by Ian Hathaway