Guides: Pandemics and Intellectual Discourse: Historical Perspectives

To Prevent Influenza!

Photographer: Paul Thompson

Publication: Illustrated Current News, New Haven, CT, 1918

Copyright: The National Library of Medicine believes this item to be in the public domain. http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101580385

Worcester Historical Museum

COVID-19 Chronicles: Worcester’s Community Archive
The Worcester Historical Museum is compiling a digital collection of personal stories, images, videos, social media screen grabs, and emails alongside official records and documents that will broaden the understanding of how the pandemic is affecting all segments of the community.

The Chronicle of Influenza Epidemics
Beveridge, W. I. B. (1991). The chronicle of influenza epidemics. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 13(2), 223-234.
The Origin and Virulence of the 1918 "Spanish" Influenza Virus
Taubenberger, J. K. (2006). The origin and virulence of the 1918 "Spanish" influenza virus. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 150(1), 86-112.
Updating the Accounts: Global Mortality of the 1918-1920 "Spanish" Influenza Pandemic.
Johnson, N., & Mueller, J. (2002). Updating the accounts: Global mortality of the 1918-1920 "Spanish" influenza pandemic. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 76(1), 105-115.

Coronavirus Syllabus
A cross-disciplinary resource on the coronavirus and past pandemics, with more than 200 recommendations crowdsourced by scholars of book and journal articles, literature, music, visual art and podcasts that experts believe help put this pandemic in historical context.
Disaster Studies
A series of essays from the Social Science Research Council that drawi on insights from research on disasters and public health crises, which highlight how social research can shed light on the mutual effects of social inequality and events such as the Covid-19 pandemic over time.
Humanities Coronavirus Syllabus
A crowd-sourced syllabus, which focuses on literary, historical, philosophical/religious, and cultural aspects of the current health crisis and its history. Resources include books, journal article, podcasts, webcasts and film.

Epidemics & Ecologies: Reading in the Time of COVID-19
A bibliography from WPI's William San Martín, Alexandra Vlachos and Graeme Wyn. The project mostly focuses on crucial pieces on the history of interspecies relations, human health, and ecological changes that can provide insights into the current pandemic. It's mostly coming from discussions in environmental history, but has integrated many contributions from anthropology, STS, environmental/medical humanities, and environmental studies.
The Mother of All Pandemics: The State of Black Death Research in the Era of COVID-19
Joris Roosen and Monica H. Green: "We are here defining the Black Death as the early phases (13th through 15th centuries) of the Second Plague Pandemic, which likely touched major parts of Afro-Eurasia. Given the magnitude of this semi-global pandemic, gathering together information is itself an enormous undertaking. Here, we have assembled citations to the most important recent research (mostly, from the past decade), as well as some enduring classics, as a primer for those wishing to know more about the current state of knowledge."