How might the study of multiculturalism in the Middle Ages differ across historical period and academic specialization? In this episode, Fordham University master’s students Kristian Powell and Sean Maldonado discuss their experiences studying the early medieval period. They reflect on conversations from their coursework, the importance of professorial/institutional support, and what excites them most about the diversity of the early medieval period.

For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

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!

For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

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.

For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

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.

For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

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.

For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

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).

For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

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.

For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.

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.

For more information, visit www.multiculturalmiddleages.com.