How do pandemics happen? In this episode, historians of medieval medicine Monica H. Green, Winston Black, and Lucy Barnhouse talk with Will Beattie about the genesis of a new open-access teaching module on the Black Death. Our understanding of the late medieval pandemic has been transformed not only because of advances in the biological sciences, but also because historians have recently discovered—or newly interpreted—written records from the 13th and 14th centuries. For the first time, the Islamicate world’s experience is centered in the narrative, allowing entirely new perspectives on the Afro-Eurasian pandemic to be revealed.

Access the History of the 21st Century module here!

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In this episode we sit down with the five editors of Speculations, the centennial issue of Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies. Comprised of 60 short essays that speculate about the possible futures of medieval studies, this issue represents an attempt to disrupt disciplinarity by foregrounding perspectives, methodologies, and geographies from a variety of fields from medieval studies. Born from the understanding that the future of medieval studies depends on imagination and experimentation, this issue is a collaborative attempt to mark the passing of time and open the field to a broader appeal. The short essays in this issue are an invitation to think together and reinvigorate conversations about our discipline. Join us as we reflect on the past and present of medieval studies, and as we speculate about the possible futures for our field.

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In this episode, editors Sara V. Torres and Nahir I. Otaño Gracia discuss the themed issue of Viator they co-edited entitled "Early Global Insularities." They are joined by three of the contributors to the cluster (Tarren Andrews, Tanvir Ahmed, and Jonathan F. Correa Reyes) for a conversation about both pre-modern discourses of insularity, the lasting legacies of discourses that approach insularity as a form of isolation, and some of the ways in which insularity can be theorized as a form of connection. Islands occupy a sometimes ambiguous place in center-periphery models. As the conversation explores a wide range of conceptualizing islands in medieval, early modern, and modern texts, it "centers" insularity as a topography, a literary conceit, and a disciplinary trope. In a time of climate crisis, the precarity of islands and archipelagoes (so often the sites of colonial violence) brings a sense of urgency to this reappraisal of the historical ideation of insularity and the relationship of the local to the global.

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The colorful and monumental 14th-century frescoes of Bohemian church interiors have received very little scholarly attention, and many remain completely unknown today. Yet the wall paintings have played major roles in the creation of national(ist) art historical narratives, and they offer a rare chance to examine how medieval frescoes operated within their original architectural contexts. In this episode, Reed O'Mara speaks with art historian Isabelle Chisholm on these frescoes’ long lives, discussing their medieval viewership and the reasons for their relative obscurity.

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In this episode, MMA podcast producer Loren Cantrell chats with Nancy Wu about her article, "East–West Encounters in the Fourteenth Century: John of Marignolli and the 'Tribute' Horse" (Speculum 100:4).

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In this episode, Logan Quigley (MMA team member) chats with scholar Aaron C. Pattee about the roles and realities of the medieval ministeriales—non-nobles who served in a variety of capacities within the royal palaces, the imperial estates, and the entourages of emperors, kings, and bishops during the High Middle Ages in the Holy Roman Empire.

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In this episode, Fordham University master’s student Kristian Powell is joined by his classmate Thomas Warren to discuss the life of Theodore of Tarsus. Theodore was a 7th-century intellectual refugee from Asia Minor who, through a long career as a monk in Rome, was appointed as the Archbishop of Canterbury, influencing the early Anglo-Saxon church immensely.

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In this episode, Robin Fleming and Sam Leggett discuss their work on an early fifth-century cemetery in the English village of Alton. Using bioarchaeological evidence from bones and teeth, they have made precise discoveries about the diets of individuals buried at Alton, their states of health, and even the ages at which they migrated from wetland ecosystems down tot he drier territory of the South Downs. Fleming and Leggett’s analysis helps to revise and refine long-held ideas about barbarian invasions and the fall of the Roman Empire.

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In this episode, Michael D. Barbezat (Australian Catholic University) and Miles Pattenden (Oxford University) explore the "queer medievalism" of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in the early 1980s. They discuss the Sisters' creation of "gay relics" in San Francisco, USA and Sydney, Australia, highlighting how the Sisters drew on the intellectual traditions of medieval Christianity to repurpose remnants of destroyed urban spaces as holy relics.

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In this episode, Margaret Sheble (webmaster/contributing editor for Arthuriana), Arielle McKee (Outreach Coordinator for The So What), and Brittany Claytor (Assistant Outreach Coordinator) discuss the origins and importance of the new public humanities journal The So What.

For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.