Embedded Files
In spring term 2020, I taught an upper-level seminar called Death, Hell, & Capitalism: Medieval Italy in the Age of Dante & Petrarch at New College of Florida (the state's public liberal-arts college). Under normal circumstances the major assignment required of students enrolled in the class is a research paper, as preparation for the thesis project required of all New College graduates. Halfway through the semester, however, the current coronavirus pandemic struck, and suddenly we all found ourselves in a stressful new learning environment, physically separated by hundreds if not thousands of miles and cut off from the library that supplies all our interlibrary loans and other research materials.
So I decided to do something different. Instead of one big research paper, I decided to give a variety of short weekly assignments. And I wrote my students an email...
Subject: Transitioning to Online Instruction, or Welcome to the Brigata
Subject: Transitioning to Online Instruction, or Welcome to the Brigata
Friends and colleagues:
We find ourselves in circumstances unprecedented in the modern world. The last time Cambridge University shut down due to an outbreak of plague, it was 1665 and the young Isaac Newton (sent home from Trinity College) spent the rest of the term developing the theories of universal gravitation and calculus.
I don't expect you to do that, but I do want to emphasize how unusual and how serious this situation is. Events thus far have already demonstrated that just because we can follow the development of the pandemic minute by minute on social media—which Europeans obviously couldn't in 1347-8—doesn't mean that we're any better than they were at fending it off. To the extent that you can, therefore, use your better understanding of the situation to do what you can to stop the spread of the virus: hand-washing, social distancing, self-quarantine, etc. You have knowledge that people in the fourteenth century didn't—USE IT.
(A 15c French manuscript showing Boccaccio's group of ten young people—aka the brigata—who sequester themselves in a villa outside Florence to escape the Black Death)
So: we will continue this class online, but I don't want anyone putting themselves at risk just to complete this class. Don't go to the public library. Don't go to the nearest university library. Don't go to Starbucks to use the wifi. Whatever resources you have where you are safe and healthy, we will work with: just let me know what they are. (I am serious about this: if you will not have reliable internet access for the next two months and all you have at home is your copy of Jansen/Drell/Andrews and some lined paper, I will give you assignments to write out by hand and mail to me.)
[extensive discussion of logistics which you really don't need to read]
Meanwhile, pretend this is a virtual Decameron: there are ten of us; we are all quarantined by the [COVID-19] plague, and while we're not in a villa in the hills outside Florence, we can use this space to pass the time and learn something despite everything that's crazy in the world. We will get through this.
From my couch, surrounded by rampaging rugrats,
Professor Beneš
Boccaccio's brigata, from a manuscript of the Decameron illustrated by Taddeo Crivelli in 1467, now Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Holkham misc. 49 (f. 5r)
This website, Dispatches from the Brigata, is the result of that conversion to online instruction and my students' efforts. Each page includes students' responses to a single assignment, whether that was a Powerpoint presentation, an infographic, a writing assignment, or something else.
The site makes no claim to be a comprehensive introduction to medieval Italy, since we'd already done half the semester before we moved online. Nor does it claim to be evidence of an "optimal" online learning experience: it was last-minute, it was jury-rigged, and some course goals had to be jettisoned entirely (mostly those related to the research paper). But I hope the materials on this site show that we were all able to stay engaged and creative, and that we were able to use this time in quarantine (from Italian quarantena, 40 days) to reflect on parallels between our own circumstances and those of Italians during the Black Death (like Boccaccio's brigata).
About me
My name is Carrie Beneš; I teach medieval and Renaissance history and urban history at New College of Florida in Sarasota. My area of speciality is the Italian cities of the later Middle Ages (ca. 1100–1400). For more about me, see:
"A Medievalist's Modern Perspective on Plague"
(an interview I did for New College News)
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