Les leçons de l'histoire des pandémies

Pandemic, Creating a Usable Past: Epidemic History, COVID-19, and the Future of Health

ZOOM Webinar

May 8-9, 2020


In the face of COVID-19, historians of public health, nursing, and medicine come together to reflect on past epidemics and their implications for how we confront today’s unfolding crisis.

Those who study epidemics and pandemics in the past see powerful echoes in the present crisis. In the past as today, families and societies grappled with the sudden tragic loss of life. They debated the social and economic fallout from the epidemic. They struggled with tensions over the halting of commerce, the imposition of quarantines, and social distancing measures. They fought over the impact of public health measures on personal freedom and civil liberties. They tried to make sense of the different impact of disease across regions and populations, well-off and poor. They sought cures and prevention measures, even as dubious theories and fraudulent practices sprung up. They argued over what forms of knowledge or faith would guide them through the calamity. They called for reinventing public health during the crisis, and for rethinking social priorities once the epidemic subsided. And, even as the toll of death widened, they planned for the uncertain future.

With history as our guide, this forum of epidemic experts explores how people and societies in former eras responded to pandemic challenges. What perspective does their experience offer for the present? What guidance does the past provide for the future of public health, health care, and public policy?

Sponsored by the American Association for the History of Medicine (link is external)
with support from Princeton University, Department of History
Please Note: Registration is required in order to attend. Each session requires a separate registration. All links to online registration forms are listed below each panel's information.

Friday, May 8, 2020
9 am | Introduction and Welcome
Keith Wailoo, Princeton University
9:15 - 10:30 am | Session 1 | Explaining Epidemics: The Past in the Present

Decades ago, in the early days of the AIDS crisis, historian Charles Rosenberg wrote “epidemics start at a moment in time, proceed on a stage limited in space and duration, following a plot line of increasing revelatory tension, move to a crisis of individual and collective character, then drift toward closure.” In the course of epidemics, societies grappled with sudden and unexpected mortality and also returned to fundamental questions about core social values. “Epidemics,” Rosenberg wrote, “have always provided occasion for retrospective moral judgment.” (“What is an Epidemic?”) This introductory panel features a discussion on these and other features of past epidemics – cholera, AIDS, plague, influenza, and so on – and their implications for understanding the unfolding COVID-19 crisis.

Discussants:
Nancy Tomes (link is external), Stony Brook University
Charles Rosenberg (link is external), Harvard University
Moderator: Keith Wailoo, Princeton University
REGISTRATION FOR INTRODUCTION AND SESSION 1:
https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_1DFF7IAIQF-FgqopI4d08g (link is external)

Friday, May 8, 2020
11 am - 12:30 pm | Session 2 | Epidemics and Urban Centers: Different Cities, Disparate Experiences

Pandemics are often disparate in their impact – devastating some areas while sparing others, affecting regions and countries differently, and revealing shocking divergences along lines of social density, geography, class, and ethnicity. Public responses and public health measures can also accentuate these differences. What light do past experiences with influenza, Ebola, and other epidemics shed on our understanding of the forces driving these different experiences across urban centers and the geopolitics of epidemics? How can this history inform responses to COVID-19?

Presenters:
Howard Markel (link is external), physician/historian, University of Michigan | Social Distancing/Urban Disparities
Evelynn Hammonds (link is external), Harvard University | On the Racial Effects of Epidemics
Kavita Sivaramakrishnan (link is external), Columbia University | Local and Global Effects
Gregg Mitman (link is external), University of Wisconsin, Madison | The Geopolitics of Ebola and COVID-19
Moderator: Pablo Gómez (link is external), University of Wisconsin, Madison
REGISTRATION FOR SESSION 2:
https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BFEjYTZRTEeJZN3COeiaIw (link is external)

Friday, May 8, 2020
1 - 3:30 pm | Session 3 | Battling Epidemics: Historian/Heath Care Practitioners Reflect on their Experiences on the Front Lines of Care

What are the experiences of practitioners on the front lines of care? This panel of historian/physicians and historians/nurses from across the U.S. offers insight into patient experiences, professional risks, triage challenges, therapeutic choices, innovative practices, and downstream effects associated with the COVID-19 crisis. As historians of medicine and nursing, panelists will also put their frontline experiences into historical perspective and discuss the long-term implications of COVID-19 on health care and society.

Presenters:
Barron Lerner, (link is external) physician/historian, New York University | Trust, Expertise, and History
Carla Keirns, (link is external) physician/historian, University of Kansas | Medical Ethics/Front line Care
Julie Fairman (link is external), nurse/historian, University of Pennsylvania | COVID-19 Through the Lens of Nursing
Chris Crenner (link is external), physician/historian, University of Kansas | The Challenge of Triage
Hughes Evans (link is external), physician/historian, Emory University | Downstream Effects in Pediatrics
Jeremy Greene (link is external), physician/historian, Johns Hopkins | The Past, Present, and Future of Tele-health
Moderator: Dominique Tobbell (link is external), University of Minnesota
REGISTRATION FOR SESSION 3:
https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ecM_akg7TquOG0KfmdDBag (link is external)

Saturday, May 9, 2020
9 - 10:30 am | Session 4 | Epidemic Responses: Civil Liberties and Public Health Politics

In the face of epidemic outbreaks, public health demands (whether for the wearing of masks, stay-at-home orders, quarantine and curfews, no-spitting ordinances, or mandatory testing) have often sacrificed individual freedoms in order to safeguard public wellbeing. But in the past, as today, controversies have flared over those demands and their lasting consequences. What implications have pandemics and crises in the past, and responses to them, had for civil liberties? How can the past inform the present response to COVID-19?

Presenters:
Barron Lerner (link is external), New York University | Pandemics and Civil Liberties
Richard Mizelle (link is external), University of Houston | Black Lives in the Wake of Calamity
David Barnes (link is external), University of Pennsylvania | Quarantine: Lessons from the Lazaretto
Moderator: Raúl Necochea (link is external), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
REGISTRATION FOR SESSION 4:
https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_leAwx4LfR9Kp5WxmZr11kg (link is external)

Saturday, May 9, 2020
11 am - 12:30 pm | Session 5 | Uncertain Knowledge in Epidemics: How Crises Spur New Therapies, Surveillance Practices, and Dubious Theories

In the face of epidemic illness and sweeping death and with few effective treatments, social and medical experimentation thrives. In past outbreaks, new therapies, new vaccines, new surveillance practices, and new theories about bodies and difference have flourished – some effective and lasting, others dubious and destructive. What light does this history of uncertain knowledge shed on our today’s COVID-19 experience? How can history inform public understanding of the quest for solutions on the road ahead?

Presenters:
Mariola Espinosa (link is external), University of Iowa | Theories of Race, Immunity, Yellow Fever
Emily Waples (link is external), Hiram College | Meaning and Politics of Symptoms in the 19th Century and Today
Graham Mooney (link is external), Johns Hopkins University | Infectious Disease Surveillance, 19th Century Origins and Legacy
Susan Lederer (link is external), University of Wisconsin, Madison | Convalescent Serum Therapy: Past and Present
Moderator: Carin Berkowitz (link is external), New Jersey Council of the Humanities
REGISTRATION FOR SESSION 5:
https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_I3T1-ZofSQqswPQ4a3cQqQ (link is external)

Saturday, May 9, 2020
1:30 - 3 pm | Session 6 |After Epidemics: The Challenge of Reinventing Public Health

From cholera to polio and AIDS, epidemic crises often spur societies to reinvent public health. How have societies in the past retooled public health practices and administration after epidemics? What implications might we draw for the remaking of national and global public health in the wake of the 2020 coronavirus?

Presenters:
Anne-Emanuelle Birn (link is external), University of Toronto | The Pasts and Possible Futures of Global Public Health
Akwasi Kwarteng Amoaka-Gyampah (link is external), University of Education, Winneba, Ghana | Past and Future of Sanitary Inspection
Dora Vargha (link is external), University of Exeter | Polio and Global Health Politics
Nancy Tomes (link is external), Stony Brook University | Informing and Misinforming the Public
Moderator: Keith Wailoo, Princeton University
3 - 3:30 pm | Closing discussion with panelists

Moderator: Keith Wailoo, Princeton University
REGISTRATION FOR SESSION 6 AND CLOSING DISCUSSION:
https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_tY-JuMa3TkimMaSWEodQgA (link is external)

Organized by:
Keith Wailoo, Princeton University
Jodi Koste (link is external), American Association for the History of Medicine
Mikey McGovern, Princeton University
Julia Stone, Princeton University
Kim Worthington, Princeton University
Carla Zimowsk, Princeton University
Center for Collaborative History - Princeton University