Jamie Kreiner is Associate Dean, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of History at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on the mechanics of culture, especially in the quieter forces that shape ethical systems — forces that were not always purposeful, individual, or human. She is the author of The Wandering Mind , which tracks early Christian monks’ frustrations with distraction, and Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West . Her work has been awarded prizes from the Medieval Academy of America, the American Society for Environmental History, the Society for French Historical Studies, the Agricultural History Society, the University of Georgia, and the Whiting Foundation.
Zan Boag: It’s easy to blame technology as the cause of our problems with distraction in the modern world, but your research shows that the problem of distraction is nothing new. While our propensity to be distracted may not by new, is the sheer volume of distraction the
