2022-23 Old Dominion Public Lecture Series – “ The Harvest Indeed is Great, but the Labourers are Few”: Strangers in the Medieval Countryside

Seasonal labor brought considerable numbers of workers long distances to villages and estates in the Middle Ages. These ‘strangers’ faced many difficulties in their interactions with the local population. The lecture addresses several of these difficulties and how elites, villagers, and migrant laborers coped with them.

William Chester Jordan is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History. He is a former director of the Humanities Council’s Program in Medieval Studies and previously served as director of the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies. Jordan is a prolific author whose current research focuses on migrant labor in the 13^th and early 14^th century. His Old Dominion Research Professorship will support the study of the economic and social experiences of migrant laborers in the High Middle Ages in the rural areas of northwestern continental Europe.

Old Dominion Research Professors contribute to the Council’s programs and events and engage the campus community in sustained discussions about their research. This cohort of senior faculty join a yearlong program designed to provide additional research time and to enhance the humanities community more broadly. They also serve as faculty fellows in the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. Old Dominion Professors are full professors in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.