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Vienna’s plague column; the AIDS quilt; Mexico City’s Memorial to Victims of Violence; Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

How Will We Remember This?

A COVID memorial will have to commemorate shame and failure as well as grief and bravery.
by Justin Davidson via Curbed on March 15, 2021
Illustration of Thomas Morton of Merrymount being arrested by Myles Standish of the Plymouth Colony

Pranksters and Puritans

Why Thomas Morton seems to have taken particular delight in driving the Pilgrims and Puritans out of their minds.
by Christopher Benfey via New York Review of Books on February 15, 2021
A painted picture of someone receiving a vaccine

History Shows Americans Have Always Been Wary of Vaccines

Even so, many diseases have been tamed. Will Covid-19 be next?
by Alicia Ault via Smithsonian on January 26, 2021
Artistic graphic of a woman holding hands with two other people

‘Solidarity, Not Charity’: A Visual History of Mutual Aid

Tens of thousands of mutual aid networks and projects emerged around the world in 2020. They have long been a tool for marginalized groups.
by Ariel Aberg-Riger via CityLab on December 22, 2020
Exhibit

Epidemic Proportions

How Americans have understood epidemics, from the Columbian Exchange to COVID-19.
Statue of Shakespeare, Central Park, New York City.

Shakespeare’s Contentious Conversation With America

James Shapiro’s recent book looks at why Shakespeare has been a mainstay of the cultural and political conflicts of the country since its founding.
by Alisa Solomon via The Nation on December 17, 2020
A cemetery.

New Orleans: Vanishing Graves

Holt Cemetery has been filled to capacity many times over; each gravesite has been used for dozens of burials.
by Charlie Lee via The American Scholar on December 7, 2020
Replica of the original Plimoth Plantation.

The Complicated Legacy of the Pilgrims is Finally Coming to Light After 400 Years

Descendants of the Pilgrims have highlighted their ancestors’ role in the country’s founding. But their sanitized version of events is only now starting to be told in full.
by Peter C. Mancall via The Conversation on September 4, 2020
partner

Polio on Trial

What if there is a vaccine, but not everyone gets it? Exploring the lessons of the polio vaccine's shortcomings as we address a new public health crisis today.
via Future Of America's Past on August 10, 2020
Map of Boston from 1722.

This "Miserable African": Race, Crime, and Disease in Colonial Boston

The murder that challenged Cotton Mather’s complex views about race, slavery, and Christianity.
by Mark S. Weiner via Commonplace on July 13, 2020

The Cure and the Disease

Social Darwinism from AIDS to Covid-19.
by Erik Baker via The Drift on June 19, 2020
Women in the Red Cross posing for a picture

Rampaging Invisible Killer Stalks the Entire Country!

Influenza pandemic of 1918 in the United States.
by Ashley Cuffia via Library of Congress on June 1, 2020
Woman working on a computer and holding a baby in her lap.
partner

Will Covid-19 Lead to Men and Women Splitting Care Work More Evenly?

History shows that men have always been able to handle care work — when they have to.
by Sarah Keyes via Made By History on May 12, 2020
The Oakland Municipal Auditorium set up as a hospital, with Red Cross nurses tending to flu patients, 1918.

The 1918 Flu Pandemic Killed Millions. So Why Does Its Cultural Memory Feel So Faint?

A new book suggests that the plague’s horrors haunt modernist literature between the lines.
by Rebecca Onion, Elizabeth Outka via Slate on May 3, 2020

When the Seattle General Strike and the 1918 Flu Collided

The first major general strike in the United States coincided with the last major pandemic. Here’s the full story.
by Cal Winslow via Jacobin on May 1, 2020

Numbering the Dead

A brief history of death tolls.
by Shannon Pufahl via New York Review of Books on April 21, 2020

Don’t Look For Patient Zeros

Naming the first people to fall sick often leads to abuse.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on April 8, 2020
LGBT demonstrators link arms facing a line of mounted police.

They Were Warriors: The ACT UP Protests That Shook Chicago

In 1990, activists — many fighting for their lives — staged one of the biggest AIDS demonstrations in history. Here’s how it played out, in the words of those who were there.
by Mary Patten, Rebecca Makkai, Lori Cannon, Jeff Edwards, Justin Hayford, Saundra Johnson, Owen Keehnen, Steve Migalski, Roberto Sanabria, Jeanne Kracher, Bill McMillan via Chicago Magazine on April 7, 2020
Engraving of Reverend Cotton Mather, 1721, surrounded by a crowd.

The Slave Who Helped Boston Battle Smallpox

Like so many black scientists past, the African who brought inoculation to the American colonies never got his due.
by Lashyra Nolen via UnDark on April 2, 2020

The History of Loneliness

Until a century or so ago, almost no one lived alone; now many endure shutdowns and lockdowns on their own. How did modern life get so lonely?
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on March 30, 2020
partner

Surviving a Pandemic, in 1918

A century ago, Catholic nuns from Philadelphia recalled what it was like to tend to the needy and the sick during the great influenza pandemic of 1918.
by Allison C. Meier via JSTOR Daily on March 21, 2020
Rahima Banu
partner

Coronavirus: Lessons From Past Epidemics

Dr. Larry Brilliant, who helped eradicate smallpox, says past epidemics can teach us to fight coronavirus.
via Retro Report on March 19, 2020

Keep it Clean: The Surprising 130-Year History of Handwashing

Until the mid-1800s, doctors didn’t bother washing their hands. Then a Hungarian medic made an essential, much-resisted breakthrough.
by Amy Fleming via The Guardian on March 18, 2020
Chicago buildings at the turn of the 20th century.

Reversing a River: How Chicago Flushed its Human Waste Downstream

In 1906, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Chicago to move forward with a spectacularly disgusting feat of modern engineering.
by Gregory D. Smithers via We're History on February 18, 2020

The Invention of Thanksgiving

Massacres, myths, and the making of the great November holiday.
by Philip J. Deloria via The New Yorker on November 18, 2019

Resistance to Immunity

A review of three recent books that delve into the history and science of vaccines and immunity, and the anxieties that accompany them.
by Gavin Francis via New York Review of Books on May 23, 2019
Detail from a painting of David Hosack’s "Elgin Garden," ca. 1815.

Flower Power: Hamilton's Doctor and the Healing Power of Nature

In the early 1800s, David Hosack created one of the nation's first botanical gardens to further his pioneering medical research.
by Rebecca Rego Barry via The Public Domain Review on January 24, 2019
original

The Drunkard’s Progress

Two hundred years ago, it was hard for Americans to miss the message that they had a serious drinking problem.
by Benjamin Breen on January 17, 2019

Sick Days

How Congress bent the rules to combat the Spanish Flu while it's own members began to become victims of the pandemic
via History, Art, & Archives: United States House of Representatives on December 17, 2018
Newspaper front-page with headline "When Gen. La Grippe Declares War on the U.S.A."
partner

Forgotten Flu

A look back at the so-called “Spanish Flu," how it affected the U.S., and why it’s often overlooked today.
via BackStory on November 30, 2018

What Thucydides Knew About the US Today

His accounts of polarization in ancient Athens are as relevant today they were thousands of years ago.
by Edward Mendelson via New York Review of Books on October 29, 2018
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