Hello! Welcome or welcome back to me finding my way back to researching historical topics post grad
I wrote about post grad burnout then had a mild “nope” stage for a few months. Now we are here and I am finally mentally and physically ready to research cool stuff. Only question is… um what cool things do I want to dive into? This is very much like “I want to {draw play, video games, eat} but I don’t know what I want.”
I started thinking like a college student and made a list of books I saw in college syllabi that I simply didn’t have time to read, but became very curious about. I am an Early Modern English Historian by trade or the list naturally became a little… dark. The list of books to start with included (but was not limited to):
Women of Fortune: Money, Marriage, and Murder in Early Modern England by , The domestic herbal: Plants for the home in the seventeenth century by Margaret Willes, Sociable Knowledge: Natural History and the Nation in Early Modern Britain by Elizabeth Yale, Medicine, religion, and magic in early Stuart England: Richard Napier’s medical practice by Ofer Hadass, and London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690–1800 by Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker.
Where to go from here:
There is a bit of a theme developing here with nature, murder, science, and society. I am very interested in death and how society interacts with it, so this makes a bit of sense. This is me now allowing myself to feel the curiosity of research in a fun way, no deadlines or restrictions. Starting with The Domestic Herbal, I will be following what sticks out to me. However, I do want to be ethical in my focus here, and will also be balancing the record. Herbal use has a mixed history as it has good and bad uses (like medicine and murder). Keeping note of these concerns, self proclaimed witch records will be considered for this work. Witches and Druid work does have a legitimate history and has reignited in recent years due to Big Pharma worries.
Historical research does include a critical thinking that we call historical thinking. It is a way for me to (attempt to) remove what I know now and only focus on what is in the records. Bias is something everyone has and it can be fun to play with when you know how to challenge it in yourself. I want to understand or play with the contradiction of medicine and science that begins to show in the 17th century. Some of this contradiction is due to plague, and some of other external reasons, like a shifting political world. Overall, this post is truly me just spit balling but it helped to organize my thoughts and might help others. I hope.