Week 4 Discussion Board

Write at least one concise paragraph to address each prompt. For Part II, you may want to use more than one paragraph. Use at least 3 examples for Part I and 3 examples for Part II. Also, include in-text citations whenever you quote or paraphrase the readings. 

Part I:

For this discussion board, I would like you to compare Marchione di Coppo Stefani and Ibn Battuta’s descriptions of the Black Death. What do these sources tell us about the European and Islamic response to the plague? Please reference The Florentine Chronicle and “The Plague in Damascus” in your response. In addition, use at least one example from either “Ordinance of Laborers” or “Sources for the Black Death and the Jews” to support your answer. Did any of the readings (or Professor Wood’s lectures) challenge what you already knew about the Black Death?

Part II:

One of the things we want to get you thinking about in this course is how narratives surrounding events, groups of people, and social practices change over time. How did narratives regarding gender change during the medieval period and the Renaissance? Connect these narratives (that is, what people believed about women) with changes in how women were treated in European society. Next, compare treatment of women to the persecution of Jews. For your thesis statement, explain what this comparison between women and the Jews tells us about the relationship between persecution and massive, destabilizing events.

In your response, use material from the following readings: Joan Kelly Gadol’s “Did Women Have a Renaissance?”; “Sources for the Black Death and the Jews,” and Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum. I would also recommend using Professor Wood’s Week 4, Lecture 2.

• Marchione di Coppo Stefani, The Florentine Chronicle (excerpts)Links to an external site.
• "Ordinance of Labourers"Links to an external site.
• The Black Death and the JewsLinks to an external site.
• Ibn Battuta, Travels (excerpts)Links to an external site.
• Petrarch, "A Letter to Boccaccio"Download Petrarch, "A Letter to Boccaccio"
• Joan Kelly Gadol, "Did Women Have a Renaissance?"Download Joan Kelly Gadol, "Did Women Have a Renaissance?"
• Heinrich Kramer, Malleus Maleficarum (excerpts)