“With the pandemic, the possibility of a physical conference collapsed, and so we decided that we would look for something more timely, something that would be useful, both intellectually but also pedagogically,” said W. David Myers, Ph.D., professor of history at Fordham and a member of the Board of Directors of the  Renaissance Society, which relocated to the Rose Hill campus last year.

As historians, they did what they are trained to do: They brought the past into the present.

The new symposium, titled “Plagues, Pandemics, and Outbreaks of Disease in History” will take place virtually on Friday, Nov. 13, beginning at 10 a.m. The symposium is free but participants need to register in advance.

Myers said the goal of the symposium is to show how history helps us see the current moment, as well as how the current moment can help us understand the past.

“What can we bring to the study of the modern pandemic, from our historical experience, but just as much, what can we bring to the study of past plagues?” he said. “ How will this experience–as human beings in this sad world at the moment–alter or affect the way we study?”

The morning session will feature a round table on the intellectual and scholarly significance of the present moment in historical terms. The participants–Hannah Marcus, Ph.D. (Harvard), Colin Rose, Ph.D. (Brock University, Ontario), and Lisa Sousa, Ph.D. (Occidental College)–are experts in the global consequences of plagues from the Black Death in Europe to smallpox in the conquest of the Americas.

Central to the planning of the symposium, Myers said, has been Christina Bruno, associate director of the Center for Medieval Studies and a Fordham Ph.D. in medieval history who has also published in Renaissance Quarterly.

Myers said the event, which is co-sponsored by the society as well as Fordham’s Center for Medieval Studies and the Departments of Art History and Music, Classics, and History, will also allow graduate students at Fordham to present and discuss their work in front of an international audience.

Rachel Podd, a Ph.D. student in history; Camila Marcone, an M.A. student in medieval studies; Mark Host, an M.A. student in medieval studies; and Katherina Fostana, the visual resources curator in art history will participate in the session called “Developing Pedagogy: Roundtable and Discussion.”

Some of these students will talk about how they’ve taught materials on the plague and other historic pandemics to their classrooms in the New York City area. A few of their examples will be presented at the symposium, including how Podd gave a lecture for high school students in the spring on the Black Death plague and Marcone put together a project on the plague for a high school in New Jersey.

“We’re showing that our students really are reaching out to the community and recognizing that education at the university and college level is only the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

“[Our scholars] are trying to incorporate a whole world of study, from archeology to medical study to our history, in order to help students today understand the historical experience and place themselves in history somehow,” Myers said. The partnership between Fordham and the Renaissance Society of America helps bring together scholars from across the world and helps to elevate the work of Fordham graduate students, he said.

“[Renaissance Society of America] gets to tap a population of scholars and the population of students and workers who are vibrant and energetic and interesting,” Myers said. “It brings an internationally important and significant organization in the humanities into the world of Fordham and allows us to tap that experience.”

“There’s kind of a logic to this because, while we’re not affiliated with the Catholic Church, the Jesuit order was founded in the Renaissance,” Zecher said. “There’s this connection.”

The academic society officially moved to Fordham from the City University of New York Graduate Center in July, with offices for its staff in Faber Hall and a new headquarters for its academic journal, Renaissance Quarterly, in Walsh Library.

“We could just go off and get offices on our own but we want to be involved with academic life,” Zecher said. “We produce a journal and we run a conference and we can do that I suppose anywhere, but it makes sense to be collaborating with a university.”

The society was founded in 1954 and currently has about 5,000 members worldwide, including professors, museum curators, graduate students, and librarians.

“It’s Renaissance studies in a very large sense, so the time period our society focuses on is 1300 to 1700—all academic fields for that 400-year period. So we have art historians and literary scholars and even philosophy and history of science,” she said.

When the society agreed to move to Fordham, the University established a fellowship at Renaissance Quarterly for a graduate student to get hands-on experience with academic publishing. Subscriptions to the journal, which are available to members of the RSA and institutions, such as universities and museums, total over 10,000 in 2019.

Michael Sanders, a Ph.D. student in history with a medieval concentration, received the fellowship and serves as the book reviews manager for the journal.

“As a graduate student,” Sanders said, “you always see the finished product of journals—using them in our research—but this job is nice because you get to see what goes on behind [the scenes].”

The role also gives Sanders a chance to learn beyond his Ph.D. work.

“As graduate students, you write a dissertation—you’re focused on one subject and specialized, but with this journal, you get to kind of scope the whole field, from art history to philosophy, theology, history,” he said. “It helps you connect your own work to broader trends.”

The Renaissance Quarterly staff also includes David Myers, Ph.D., Fordham professor of history, who serves as its book reviews editor and played a role in helping bring the society to Fordham. A work-study position for a second graduate student was recently added as well.

“Having the Fordham people working on the journal really makes it feel more tied to the University, really makes them a part of it,” said managing editor Colin Macdonald, Ph.D. “You can tell [Fordham’s] a place where the humanities are not an afterthought. They’re really important and really vital and I think we feed off that.”

As the society gets settled in its new location, Zecher said there will be plenty of opportunities for partnerships between RSA and Fordham.

“We don’t want to just barge in and say, ‘here’s what Fordham should be doing in Renaissance studies,’” she said. “We want to figure out ways that we can collaborate.”

Zecher said she’s beginning to hold informal meetings with faculty to learn more about their work and the role the society can play in it.

Unrelated to the move, Heather Dubrow, the John D. Boyd, S.J. Chair in Poetic Imagination at Fordham, will be recognized by the society at its conference in Philadelphia in 2020. Dubrow will have two panels in her honor; one will focus on new directions in lyric studies and the second will be a roundtable discussion on the impact of her work in the field.

Having the RSA at Fordham benefits everyone, Dubrow said.

“Through its conferences and journal, RSA has taught me a great deal throughout my career,” she said, adding that Fordham graduate students will learn a lot from the work they’ll be doing with the society.

Zecher said she’s beginning to plan for next year’s fall board of directors meeting, which would include a symposium that students and faculty could attend at Fordham.

Both Zecher and Sanders said they hope the society’s presence on campus can enhance the University’s Renaissance-related studies and capture student interest.

“The topics that we work with are amazingly relevant and I think students might be surprised at that because they think, ‘oh the Renaissance,’” Zecher said. “I think that if students just take a look they’ll see there are some really exciting things going on.”