Life After [the Black] Death

Last week, Carol Symes, Associate Professor of History, gave a lecture on the far-ranging consequences of the Black Death, as a follow-up to her first lecture, "The Black Death: What We Know Now." Dr. Symes began with a discussion of growing discrimination against and persecution of Jews in the immediate aftermath of the plague. Then she turned her attention to artistic and literary responses to the epidemic. Within religious imagery, Dr. Symes noted, there was an emphasis on the suffering body of Jesus. Dr. Symes then spoke about the role the Black Death had in giving rise to major rebellions on the part of agricultural and urban workers throughout Europe in the late fourteenth century.

Watch the recording of the full lecture below, and don’t miss the next and final lecture in this series, "Plague, Politics, and Napoleonic Propaganda c. 1800," which will be given by David O’Brien, Professor of Art History, on Wednesday, April 29 at 4pm CDT. 

Posted in: anti-Semitism,Black Death,Carol Symes,Medieval Europe,Plague