Professor Nancy Bisaha (History Department), Professor Christopher Smart (Chemistry Department), and John Mahoney ‘22

This summer I worked with Professor Bisaha and Professor Smart to collect and review sources for their course Medieval Science and Technology. The interdisciplinary course explores how technologies and the intellectual antecedents of modern science developed in the period from 500 to 1500 CE, with a concentration on how those technologies and epistemologies influenced, and were influenced by, their socio-historical contexts. While the course focuses on Europe, my mentors asked me to expand the geographic scope of the course material to illuminate the cross-cultural origins of certain technologies and provide comparative examples of technological development in non-European societies. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the course, these sources had to be both accessible to students of disparate academic backgrounds and representative of various intellectual disciplines.

My primary task was researching and compiling an annotated bibliography. I expanded the source material on subjects, including gunpowder technology and medicine, which were already represented in the course, and collected sources on new subjects, like metallurgy. I also proposed combinations of readings for class modules as well as a lab module on the usage of astrolabes.  

While I thoroughly enjoyed the research, I struggled with two problems: an unfamiliarity with digital research and difficulty focusing my research. Both were eventually solved through consultations with my mentors and Vassar College librarians, who introduced me to new online resources and helped me concentrate my research. By the end of the program, I emerged with a new appreciation for the powers of online research, as well as a newfound excitement for interdisciplinary research. As a final cap to my Ford Scholarship, I am preparing a subject and readings for a class module that I will lead when the course is taught this spring.  

While I spent most of my time working sitting at this desk, my real workplace was online

I placed the sources that seemed most appropriate as class readings on a shared Moodle page

Other, more arcane sources were put into annotated bibliographies organized by subject