Emily Heimerman

PhD
History

Title of Dissertation : "Plagued by Trauma": Disease, Christianity, and Emotions in Late-Medieval Iberia and Italy (1347-1527 C.E.)

"Plagued by Trauma" focuses on Iberian and Italian trauma responses spurred by plague outbreaks during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries (c. 1340s-1520s). The thematic approach, however, is rooted in the evolving fields of emotional histories and trauma studies. Emily adopts a “case study” approach and flesh out various late-medieval intersections of trauma, disease, and Christianity. These subjects include: literary traditions and medieval predictions of the antichrist and apocalypse during the Black Death, a moving autobiographical account of parental grief, night terrors, and hauntings in Florence, the flourishing of the Cult of St. Roch in Iberia, and the mass plague grave that became the foundation for the Igreja de São Roque in Lisbon, Portugal.