Event Description

For the Environments and Ecologies of Transmission colloquium (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), Nükhet Varlık will give a talk on “Plague Ecologies in the Ottoman Empire: Rethinking the Second Pandemic (ca.1340s–ca.1940s)”.

The majority of studies on the Black Death and its recurring plagues—collectively referred to as the Second Pandemic—follow a human-centric model for explaining the emergence, spread, and disappearance of the pandemic, mainly informed by the European experience. Drawing on research on plague in the Ottoman Empire, this talk will introduce new possibilities of thinking about the pandemic by emphasizing the importance of climate, animals, and disease ecologies of the wider Mediterranean world, with a view to bringing latest scientific studies in conversation with historical sources. As the longest continuous manifestation of plague in recorded human history, the Ottoman experience of plague (from ca.1340s to ca.1940s—600 years of uninterrupted plagues) allows us to question, re-conceptualize, and unsettle current historical and scientific wisdom about past plagues.

Tuesday 23 March 2021, 14:00–15:30 CET

Source: https://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/event/environments-and-ecologies-transmission

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