The History Department of the College of Staten Island Spring 2021 History Lecture Series presents: “Pandemics and Catastrophe: The Justinianic Plague and the Origins of the Middle Ages,” a talk and discussion with Merle Eisenberg, National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), Annapolis, MD, and Lee Mordechai, Hebrew University (History Department), Jerusalem, Israel.
Moderators: Professor Eric A. Ivison and Adjunct Assistant Professor Joseph Frusci
This virtual event will tke place on Friday, Mar. 5 from 2:00pm to 3:30pm on Zoom.
About this Talk: The Justinianic Plague (c. 541-750 CE) is often depicted in scholarly and public literature as a major transformative event in Eurasian history with detrimental effects on politics, the economy, and culture, from sub-Saharan Africa to England and the Middle East. This talk situates this pandemic in its historical context to demonstrate that its effects could be significant in the short-term, but its long-term effects appear dubious. Instead, we argue that pandemics in the ancient and medieval past have been made into spectacularly unusual events in the 20th-21st centuries to demonstrate modern superiority. At the end, we suggest that our own ongoing COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates that we still experience many of the same problems.
Please join us for this fascinating talk and discussion on Zoom. Please register prior to the start of the event to ensure that you arrive before the lecture starts.
This is a CC CLUE event.
By the Division of Academic Affairs
