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Rebecca Messbarger

Rebecca Messbarger

Professor of Italian at Washington University in St. Louis; Director of Medical Humanities; expert in Italian Enlightenment history, medicine, and anatomy.

Jul 14, 2026

1:31
Can you walk us through that example and why that example stuck with you and you thought it was important to bring to the conversation?
1:38
Absolutely.
1:39
And it's a question of evidence over time.
1:42
So I began with a radical moment in Italian cultural history when the old order has to cede authority to a new order, the Enlightenment age.
1:55
And I begin with a really harrowing story of a 23-year-old illiterate maidservant who is executed in the main piazza of Bologna for infanticide.
2:06
And what ends up happening is conventional to the time.
2:10
It's late December, early January, and it's the time of carnival.

17 MINS LATER

19:10
And I know I'm trying to create something more practical from a more abstract conversation, but like, do we teach to our students for them to take history always as a context or a way of thinking about like, what do I think about a problem? Or if I'm working with a researcher in like a different context, like how do we use the humanities to improve our public health interventions?

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