Merle Eisenberg is a historian of late antiquity and the early middle ages. His work examines the impact of great moments of historical change, such as the end of the Roman Empire and the Justinianic Plague (c. 541-750 C.E.), on individuals and communities.

He co-authored the 2023 Edinburgh UP book, Diseased Cinema: Plagues, Pandemics and Zombies in American Movies, which discusses how the depiction of diseases in movies has changed over the last century and what these changes reveal about American culture. Diseased Cinema analyzes how American movies about infectious diseases have reflected and driven dominant cultural narratives during the past century.

He has several other disease projects underway. The first is a book project, Pandemic and History: Disease, Myth, and the End of Antiquity, which tracks the development of the Justinianic Plague. It analyzes the plague’s differential impact based on local conditions and investigates how a plague pandemic as a catastrophic myth was created along with its continuing use to the present day, including during Covid. The book received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Collaboration grant for nearly $250,000 that is matched by a $180,000 grant from the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation. 

He is also working with colleagues at Oklahoma State University on the project, “Using socioeconomic, behavioral and environmental data to understand disease dynamics: exploring COVID-19 outcomes in Oklahoma,” which received a 3 year National Science Foundation Grant for 2024-2026. As part of this project, he is investigating the impact of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic on populations in Oklahoma to understand the comparative impact of disease on minority populations.

His second book project, Building Little Romes: Christianity, Identity, and the Formation of the Medieval West, argues that it was subjective memory of Romans, who clung to their identities in new little Romes after the political fragmentation of the Roman Empire, that changed how individuals, communities, and states conceptualized their place in the world and ushered in the Middle Ages.

He has published articles on a variety of topics and disciplinary journals including the American Historical Review, Past & Present, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Speculum, Early Medieval Europe, and The Journal of Late Antiquity. He hosts the podcast Infectious Historians on the history of disease, pandemics and medicine, which has run for over 4 years and has now released over 140 episodes.

He is currently the Vice-Chair of the University Faculty Council and previously served as the Chair of the Budget Committee.

Research Interests:

Medieval Europe, Ancient History, Diseases & Pandemics, Environmental History