Infectious Historians

Michelle Smirnova (University of Missouri-Kansas City) returns to the podcast to discuss her new book on drugs and prison in the United States, The Prescription to Prison Pipeline.The interview begins with a discussion of medicalization, and then generally follows the title of her book. The first part focuses on prescription drugs, touching also on subjects such as biomedicalization. The opioid epidemic and the so-called War on Drugs are linked to imprisonment in the United States. Finally, the pipline section reflects upon structural issues that link drugs to imprisonment. Michelle also discusses some of the ethical concerns in working with incarcerated individuals.

Karen Cook (University of Hartford) joins the Infectious Historians to discuss some of her work on medieval music. Karen begins with an overview of medieval music - its purposes, context, instruments and the people who made it. She then moves on to speak about music related to epidemics - which is generally identified through its lyrics - with some analogies to Covid. The conversation then expands to include reception and medievalism, singling out a few video games that have used medieval or medieval-like music, as well as establishing new genres where contemporary pop music receives a “medieval” cover. 

Visit our website for links to the many music pieces Karen mentioned!

John Eicher (Penn State Altoona) joins the Infectious Historians to discuss his project on the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic that examines the pandemic from a translocal and comparative perspective. John begins by describing the broad contours of the pandemic and reflects upon the different approaches scholars have adopted in telling the story of the pandemic so far. John’s own project builds upon a digitized collection of over a thousand letters describing memories and stories from the influenza pandemic, offering him a unique understanding of what the pandemic did in a variety of locales. Throughout the interview John shares some of the stories that appear in the letters, and jumps between trying to think about the pandemic as a whole and focusing on the individual experience that the sources provide. Among the topics that are discussed in the interview are the features that appear (e.g. war) or do not appear (e.g. blame) in the letters, and attempts to compare different understandings of the pandemic - for example in the United States and in Europe. Near the end the conversation moves to a discussion of Rosenberg’s understanding of an epidemic as well as a comparison to Covid. 

Tylor Brand (Trinity College Dublin) comes on the podcast to talk about his recent book, Famine Worlds: Life at the Edge of Suffering in Lebanon’s Great War. After the standard opening and welcome, the discussion begins with a survey of the Ottoman Middle East in the early 20th century, which quickly moves to examine the case of Lebanon during World War I. Tylor explains the reasons for the famine, then moves on to distinguish between different war and famine experiences within Lebanon, covering its effects on different groups during the war. Tylor also discusses the sources he used for the project, as well as the contemporaneous diseases that affected the country.

Maurits Meerwijk (Leiden University) joins the Infectious Historians to discuss his book on the effects of the third plague pandemic in Java in the first half of the 20th century. The conversation begins with a survey of Java, its location and politics as under Dutch colonialism. Plague reached Java relatively late during the pandemic (1910/1), but resulted in a large number of deaths. The interview focuses in particular on a large-scale program of home improvement that the Dutch initiated as a response to the plague - a project that lasted 30 years and resulted in the improvement of some 1.6 million local houses. The end of the conversation reflects upon Java as a third pandemic case study and considers the (lack of) historical memory of this episode.  

Kristina Sessa (Ohio State University) comes on the podcast to discuss her work on late antique historical disasters. After a brief overview of late antiquity and its importance in global history, Tina discusses her categorization of disasters and how it relates to broader disaster studies. The conversation zooms out to consider broader environmental history and environmental determinism before zooming back in to reflect upon the meaning of disaster for modern observers-historians compared to contemporaries who experienced the disaster at the time. Tina also discusses the sources she uses in her research, the role of numbers in disaster reports, as well as how contemporaries conceived of disasters. 

Merle and Lee discuss a recent conference on epidemics in the first millennium of the common era they both participated in at Georgetown University (in Washington DC). They begin with an overview of the conference itself - its topic and structure - as well as the people they met, include quite a few who were already guests on the show (and a few others who will be guests on the show in the next few episodes). They discuss some of the topics of the talks in the conference and how the many scholars who work on mostly premodern diseases from different disciplines in certain times and places who came together and demonstrated the diverse approaches in this dynamic field of studies. They finish the episode with a brief outline of some of the future topics the podcast will cover.