Flea and ANT: Mapping the mobility of the Plague, 1330s–1350s

Abstract

Bruno Latour's Actor-Network Theory (ANT) serves as a useful heuristic for thinking about the fourteenth-century Plague as well as about the interdiscipline of plague studies. Examining medieval narrative ‘maps’ of the mobility of the Plague, modern geographical maps, computer simulations of the movement of the Plague, and maps of the Y. pestis and rat genome demonstrates different types and scales of mobility, and also raises questions about the place of humanists in plague studies.