by the Past & Present editorial team Edited by Dr. Hannah Murphy (King’s College London) the 18th Suppmentary issue of Past & Present “Medicine, Race, and Slavery in the Transatlantic World, 1600–1850” comprising 12 articles has now been published. The suppment’s abstract explains the volume illustrates that: “The histories of medicine, transatlantic slavery, and race cannot, and should not, be viewed separately. Between 1440 and 1888 more than twelve million African people were forcibly trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean, enslaved in plantations, cities, and homes across the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe. As emerging discourses on anatomy, physiology, and disease claimed new authority over explanations for human difference, the same period gave rise to medicalized concepts of ‘race’. Bringing these developments into a single analytical frame, this Supplement offers a wide-ranging set of case studies spanning Italy, Spain, the Canary Islands, the British and French Caribbeans, Britain, North America, Ethiopia, and the kingdoms and territories of the west coast of Africa. Ranging from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, the contributions draw on diverse archival materials, including inquisitorial trials, port inspections, medical case histories and treatises on disease, missionary correspondence, travel narratives, legal records, newspaper accounts, and first-person testimonies. Foregrounding […]

by Dr. Olivia Formby (Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge) Rational speech was hailed by early modern Europeans as the clearest outward sign of reason: the capacity that set humans above all other animals. Yet speechlessness was a common part of early modern life. All human infants were born without speech and, throughout the life cycle, speech could be impeded or even silenced, temporarily or permanently. ‘Speech/less in the Early Modern World’ research workshop (23-24 April 2026) aimed to interrogate the ways that the articulation of rational speech continues to be privileged by modern scholars as the best evidence for humanness, reason, and even emotion.  We gathered at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, to share new research that explores the multiple meanings and diverse lived experiences of speechlessness in the early modern world (c.1450-1830). Contributors and chairs were drawn from all career stages and represented institutions across the UK, Europe, Canada, and Australia. Spurred on by gorgeous spring weather, the workshop was a convivial environment for interdisciplinary discussion about voice, the body, and personhood in early modernity. Across six panels, we explored how people of the past experienced varying degrees of speechlessness due to illness or disability, enslavement, migration, spiritual events, […]

by Dr. Yeliz Teber (Wolfson College, University of Oxford) The Kizilbash/Alevism-Bektashism Symposium: New Corpora, Databases, and Digital Tools in Ottoman and Contemporary Contexts, generously supported by the Past & Present Society, was held successfully at Wolfson College, University of Oxford, on 22 May 2026. Convened by Dr. Yeliz Teber, Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, the symposium brought together established and emerging scholars working on the history, culture, religion, and heritage of Kizilbash/Alevi-Bektashi communities, who constitute the largest religious minority in today’s Sunni-majority Turkey. As the first event of its kind dedicated specifically to digitally engaged approaches to Kizilbash/Alevi-Bektashi studies, the symposium provided a unique platform for scholarly exchange on new methodologies, sources, and research questions within this rapidly expanding field. The symposium featured nine research papers presented by scholars from the UK and abroad, exploring a wide range of themes and long-standing questions in the field. In the morning panel, Mark Soileau advanced a novel methodological approach to the study of the hagiography of Hacı Bektaşi, a major text narrating the life and legends of the patron-saint of the Bektashi Sufi order, by drawing on a corpus of 103 manuscripts. Soileau demonstrated how the […]