Understanding the Plague as History

Marmots, Mongols, and More!

Participants in this workshop learn about how recent scholarship has changed how historians understand the Second Plague Pandemic, aka the Black Death, and how teachers can engage students with this research. Participants will also discuss a framework for student writing using historical sources.

Lesson Resources

• Stanford History Education Group (free downloads with a free account): Understanding the Black Death and The Black Death in Florence
• “Giovanni Sercambi,” Alchetron, includes Sercambi’s illustration of the Plague.
• “Iconic Plague Images Are Often Not What They Seem,” Rae Ellen Bichell, NPR, August 18, 2017. Includes some images that are about plague and used in the lesson.
• Google documents and slides for lessons:
  • Understanding Plague slides
  • Working with Sources slides
  • Planning to write document
  • Writing! document

DBQ

Update: a couple of years after creating the original lesson, I put together an Advanced Placement History style document-based question for an AP World History class.

Secondary Sources

• Monica H. Green:
  • “Rewriting the Black Death“, episode of the Ottoman History Podcast, in this Dr. Green explains the research and arguments in the “Four Black Deaths”
  • “Four Black Deaths,” American Historical Review, Vol 125, Issue 5, Dec 2020, Pages 1601–1631. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhaa511
  • Updates to “On Learning How to Teach the Black Death,” (2020)
  • Map created by Erica Fagin
• David Perry, “Did the Black Death Rampage Across the World a Century Earlier than Previously Thought?,” Smithsonian Magazine, May 25, 2021. Dr. Perry summarizes Dr. Green’s work in an accessible article.
• Infectious Historians podcast, hosted by Merle Eisenberg and Lee Mordecai, includes several episodes on plague. Selected list:
  • Ep 4: The Black Death
  • EP 19: Plague and Contagion in the Medieval Islamic World
  • Ep 23: Myths and Legends about the Black Death
  • Ep 38: Animals and Epidemics, includes discussion of brutal Soviet attempts to control plague in Central Asia
  • Ep 67: Plague in Bombay and Urban Ecology, includes discussion of British public health authorities getting lots of stuff wrong at the turn of the 20th Century.
  • Ep 68: Persecutions during the Black Death on the importance of local factors in violence against Jews in European cities.