In 1918 an influenza pandemic swept around the globe. Some 50-100 million people died worldwide, 675,000 of them Americans. As we experience our own pandemic in 2020, the parallels are striking. In this lecture, Professor Nancy Bristow explores Americans’ differential experiences with the 1918 pandemic as well as the public health and popular reactions that emerged in response to the scourge, and will suggest some insights this history offers as we face the complex challenges and choices COVID-19 is presenting to our local, national, and global communities.

This lecture was originally given on Tuesday, June 2, 2020. This event was co-sponsored by the University of Washington Department of History, the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, and the Pacific Northwest Quarterly. History Department events are made possible by the Friends of History Fund.

Dr. Nancy K. Bristow is a professor of history at the University of Puget Sound where she teaches courses in twentieth-century United States history, with an emphasis on race, catastrophe, and social change. She also serves as a member of the leadership team for the Race & Pedagogy Institute. She is the author of "Making Men Moral: Social Engineering during the Great War" (NYU, 1996), "American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic" (Oxford, 2012), and the recent "Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College" (Oxford, 2020).