Madness, Disability and Medieval Communities: An Interview with Aleksandra Pfau

The good ship ‘Disability and Lived Religion’ sails on to late-medieval France to learn about mad individuals, their communities, and fractures in the care provided by these communities. Godelinde Gertrude Perk interviews Aleksandra (“Sasha”) Pfau, James and Emily Bost Odyssey Professor of History at Hendrix College, Arkansas, and author of Medieval Communities and the Mad: Narratives of Crime and Mental Illness in Late Medieval France (AUP). The episode introduces us to several late-medieval individuals with mental illness, challenges particular preconceptions about medieval mental illness that we may have brought on board (the religious model was present, but not omnipresent), and equips us with several parallels between disability studies and Sasha's findings as (sea) food for thought.