Centre for Research on Pandemics & Society (PANSOC)

For the sixth Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2025 series we are pleased to welcome Philip Slavin (University of Stirling). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 8 May at the normal time (1600 CEST). More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.

Abstract

The late Michael Dols has produced much valuable research on the topic of plague outbreaks in Mamluk Middle East. Paradoxically – and with the exception of Stuart Borsch’s work on the Black Death in Egypt — the topic remains under-investigated, with many questions unanswered. The proposed paper will focus on the question: When and how was plague imported into Egypt and how did it spread over its territories, in the later Mamluk period. Did Egypt have its own plague reservoir, as claimed by some 18^th– and 19^th-century writers, both Western and Egyptian? Or was it imported from elsewhere? If so, from where and by what means? And how would plague spread within Egypt, once imported on ships or on camelback? To answer this questions, the paper will rely on a wide array of sources – first and foremost, Mamluk chronicles, but also other, hitherto unutilised materials, including pilgrims’ travelogs, and correspondence of Italian merchants, , notaries, travellers and diplomats (often overlapping categories). Taken together, these sources connect together pieces of puzzle, thus revealing some fascinating insights into the questions above. Although dealing with a later period compared to other conference papers, its methodology, findings and conclusions may appear instructive to scholars and scientists of earlier plague/ infectious diseases in Egypt, for which much less source material survives.

About the Speaker

Philip Slavin received a BA and MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a PhD from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Yale and McGill, and taught at Kent before becoming Professor of History at Stirling. He is a historian working on the global history of infectious diseases and environmental disasters. He is currently engaged in several inter-disciplinary projects dealing with ‘big questions’ of the history of evolution and ecology of plague, on a global scale and in a longue durée perspective, in collaboration with aDNA scientists and palaeo-climatologists. He has published two books and 55 articles on various topics of economic, environmental history and history of diseases.  

For the fifth Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2025 series we are pleased to welcome Emily Mendenhall (Georgetown University). Note that the seminar will be held on Thursday, 24 April, one hour earlier than usual at 1500 CEST. More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.

Abstract

Long Covid is an old story linked to a new virus. Chronic Lyme. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Chronic Pain. These contested conditions are interpreted with trepidation—in many cases throughout history they have been considered unreal or imagined among medical professional: a cry for help from a hysterical woman. Though, their prominence is patterned throughout history and takes center stage in famous literature, social science, and medical humanities. Because women are centered as those most afflicted by these conditions, they have become largely feminized and dismissed, regardless of who they are. Yet, the long history of symptoms that are defined as “unexplained” or “complex” or “contested” tell us more about medicine than they do about people. These symptoms may be physical—such as pain in the back, extremities, or the base of the neck. They may be psychological—such as dissociation, brain fog, or lack of focus. They may be emotional—such as deep sadness or anxiety. It is important to listen to these complex bundles of symptoms and try to decipher them: not only through the arc of someone’s life but also a cultural history through which they have emerged, shifted, and transformed. In this talk, I track this history, beginning with hysteria, and leading us to the present-day.

About the Speaker

Emily Mendenhall is a medical anthropologist, Guggenheim Fellow, and Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Mendenhall has published widely at the boundaries of anthropology, psychology, medicine, and public health. This work focuses on social and biological links between social trauma and diabetes, the theory and experience of syndemics, how and why people use idioms of distress, mental health and well-being, complex chronic illness, and the politics of pandemics. Her monographs include Syndemic Suffering: Social Distress, Depression, and Diabetes among Mexican Immigrant Women (2012), Rethinking Diabetes: Entanglements with Trauma, Poverty, and HIV (2019), and Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji (2022). Her new book, Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long Covid, will be published in 2025.