Conventional narratives tell us that medieval lepers were pariahs who lived out their days as rejected invalids, rotting away in decrepit asylums, quarantined from society. Some of this is true. The disease became so common in Europe, however, that medieval society was compelled to adapt to the presence of the chronically ill.
Fur trading and frontier life in French Canada. As frontiers typically are, the story of the French Canadian wilderness has been a gendered one since its earliest iterations. If it ever existed in reality, this straightforward, masculine escape was complicated by complex alliances with matrilineal aboriginals and state-sponsored waves of immigration Read more…
The history of slave rebels and resistance in the Caribbean is a rich and complicated story. Enslaved people in the Caribbean resorted to active resistance much more often than their North American and South American counterparts. Haiti (known then as Saint-Domingue), Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dutch Guianas were particularly prone Read more…
Tommy and Marissa interview Jonathan Dewald, a historian, blogger, and Distinguished Professor at the University at Buffalo, about his highly anticipated new book, Status, Power and Identity in Early Modern France: The Rohan Family, 1550-1715. The result is a fascinating discussion about the Rohan family, which lived across eras that historians Read more…