BANISHMENT FROM HOME IN SERBAN MEDIEVAL HISTORY

Epistolary Documents in High-Medieval History- Writing

Teaching Statement—Constantin Serban

One of the valuable and enjoyable experiences I had as a graduate student was to teach and interact with the students in my class. An interactive and dynamic class helps motivate and engage students in the studying process. I consider teaching to be a beneficial experience for the teacher as well. Teaching encourages me to prepare the material in a systematic way, thus providing new insights in...

A liquid history Blood and animation in late medieval art

In 1276 Giles of Rome compared sperm’s effect on menstrual blood to the work of an artist carving idols from wood.2 His modification of a famous argument by Plato, later taken up by Aristotle, is highly original and points to an important junction of theories about human procreation and theories of artistic creation. Aristotle drew analogies between divine, natural, and artisanal creation with ...

Pharmacy in medieval Islam and the history of drug addiction.

DRUG ADDIcTIoN, especially through the use of poppy (Papaver somniferum Linn.) and hemp (Cannabis sativa Linn.), is the main concern of this paper. Although the use of these two plants in medieval Islam was extensive, yet little has been written on this timely subject by historians of medicine and pharmacology. Consulting contemporary original sources, it is my hope to sketch a history of their...

Ghosts in the Machine: An AI Treatment of Medieval History

This paper gives a genera l ized overview of RESEDA, an i n t e r a c t i v e quest ion answering system designed p r i m a r i l y f o r use by h i s t o r i a n s . I t s data base cons is ts o f h i s t o r i c a l i n f o rma t i on , which a t temps to descr ibe the a t t i t u d e s , p o l i t i c a l , r e l i gious and i n t e r p e r s o n a l , of the ch ie f characters of the pe r i...