DEATH AND DISEASE IN STUART ENGLAND
A FOUR-WEEK ONLINE COURSE
Start date: 7pm, Wed 12 June 2024
Course Details: What did it mean to live and die in Stuart England? From the experiences of diarists and writers to the role of plague searchers, medics and civic authorities. This four-week online course will tackle this question and more to explore key themes, such as – what did it mean to ‘die well’? How did early modern medical practitioners understand and treat disease? What role did the monarch play? And, how were death and disease expressed in art and literature?
Delivery: The course will be delivered by a series of 4 pre-recorded video lectures, and separate live group Q&As with the course tutor via a video conferencing platform. Participants will also receive course notes. Links and details will be sent to participants a few days before the course begins. Lectures will be released at 7pm (GMT) each Wednesday and will be available to view for a month and half. The live Q&A will take place at 8pm (GMT) each Wednesday of the course, beginning Wednesday 12 June 2024. It will be recorded and made available to view afterwards.
Accessibility: All lectures will have closed captions. The live Q&As will have live captioning. If you have any additional access requirements, please get in touch via enquiries@histfest.org
Please make a note of the email address you use to sign up: All email correspondence relating to the course will be sent to the the email address you used to sign up to the course. If you are unsure which email you used then please check this ahead of time to avoid any confusion. It is always worth checking your spam folder before contacting the course administrator.
Course Breakdown
Lecture One – Life Cycles: What did it mean to live and die in Stuart England? What role did religion play in shaping perceptions of physical suffering? In this lecture, we look at seventeenth century life cycles, patterns of disease, and what it meant to live and ‘die well’.
Lecture Two – Early Modern Medicine: How did early modern medics understand and treat disease? From apothecaries and physicians to midwives and nurses – how did medical practitioners evolve and interact with one another? In this lecture, we explore the often-fraught relations between the different medical authorities and shine a light on medical thinking and scientific developments.
Lecture Three – When Plague Arrives: In this lecture, we’ll unravel the role of plague in the seventeenth century. From doctors, searchers and parish clerks to victims, monarchs, and statisticians. We’ll also explore the ways in which plague (both real and metaphorical) impacted people’s lives and disrupted civic authority.
Lecture Four – Art, Literature and Legacies: In this lecture, we’ll explore the way plague and disease manifested in art and literature of the period. We’ll also look at the legacy of early modern disease – from literary tropes and the mythologising of places like Eyam to modern scientific discoveries about the nature of early modern plague.
Your Tutor
Rebecca Rideal is a historian of the early modern period and the author of 1666: Plague, War and Hellfire. She has tutored at UCL, Bath Spa, Stanford University in Oxford, and currently tutors at Oxford University’s School for Continuing Education. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and was the 2021 recipient of the University of Waterloo’s Jarislowsky Fellowship. She is also an award-winning podcast and TV producer and hosts the critically acclaimed history and true crime podcast series Killing Time. Her next book, God’s Throne, will be a history of the Stuart dynasty.
If you have any queries about the course, please do not contact the tutors direct. Instead, contact enquiries@histfest.org where we will be happy to advise.