This week I checked in with my advisor about my progress and I returned to Chapter 5 so I could jump down a rabbit hole of alchemy.

Finding history in food, art, and pop culture
This week I checked in with my advisor about my progress and I returned to Chapter 5 so I could jump down a rabbit hole of alchemy.
Like just about everyone else stuck inside during this lockdown, I’ve fallen into a sort of cabin fever malaise that’s made work pretty difficult. In that vein, I also haven’t felt much like writing blog essays, and I haven’t been inspired enough in the kitchen to post recipes. I do have some thoughts: the performance of struggle and poverty that I see from a lot of people who are doing just fine, all while delivery workers are carrying the rest of us on their backs; experiments in scarcity cooking in an effort to keep things interesting while seemingly arbitrary ingredients disappear from stores (goodbye, flour!); and, of course, my dissertation.
Read MoreCheck out this video I did with the Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages YouTube channel. We start with my views on the Ornament of the World documentary and then get into the larger topic of diversity in Norman Sicily.