{"id":382,"date":"2020-04-15T09:59:10","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T13:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saintpeters.edu\/academics\/undergraduate-programs\/history\/?p=382"},"modified":"2020-04-15T09:59:10","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T13:59:10","slug":"research-in-the-time-of-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saintpeters.edu\/academics\/undergraduate-programs\/history\/2020\/04\/15\/research-in-the-time-of-coronavirus\/","title":{"rendered":"Research in the Time of Coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"

How do historians perform research during a global pandemic? During these confusing times, Dr. Maria Americo, Assistant Professor of History, has written an open letter<\/a>\u00a0to budding historians to talk about her ongoing research during a time of national crisis. Dr. Americo specializes in Classical studies, Islamic studies, and the Ancient Mediterranean World.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear current & future historians,<\/p>\n

First off, I hope that you and your families are all well, and that you have everything you need. I am well, but I miss our academic community very much. As you all know, nearly every activity that jam-packed our busy modern lives just one month ago has now been canceled, postponed, or changed in unprecedented and irrevocable ways. The place where our work, studies, and daily lives intersected\u2014Saint Peter\u2019s University, Hilsdorf 3rd floor, and all our other buildings that dot either side of JFK Boulevard\u2014with so much laughter, fun, discussion, debate, and learning has moved online. We are all doing our best, and I am impressed by the hard work and resilient hope of our students, faculty, staff, and administrators every day.<\/p>\n

So: if college courses are online, work meetings have gone digital, news reporters broadcast from their homes, we video chat with friends and family, and I now take and teach dance classes in my living room(!), does scholarly research also still exist?<\/p>\n

Well\u2026 kind of. Historians like me, who work on premodern history, are heavily dependent for their research needs upon the libraries, with their collections of thousands of real, tangible, physical, glorious old books, with two covers, pages, and a spine. (Remember those? I sure miss books!) As I\u2019m sure you know, many libraries worldwide are now closed. But aren\u2019t books online? Yes, some books exist as digital resources. But much of my material has not been\u2014and perhaps never will be\u2014digitized. And so I patiently await the reopening of our libraries.<\/p>\n

Just days before our local and federal government began to respond to the threat of this virus in a big way, I had agreed to begin work on two exciting academic research projects. One is a book proposal(!), which is still so much in its infancy that I think I\u2019ll tell you more about it later. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

But the other is a contribution to the upcoming Encyclopedia of the Global Middle Ages, which is to be published by Bloomsbury. I\u2019m told this is the same company that published the Harry Potter series (\u2026I must be the only millennial alive who has never read those books, though students tell me I should all the time!), so it\u2019s exciting to see them move further into the academic space. Since this encyclopedia will focus on the global Middle Ages (which many of you know is right up my alley!), the editors are seeking articles that describe the ways in which cultures connected during the medieval world.<\/p>\n

For this encyclopedia I have agreed to write two Object Histories on artworks that, through their physical existence and iconography, help tell the story of the interconnected global Middle Ages. And I know some of you will recognize one or both of them!:<\/p>\n\n\t\t