CfP: Pandemics, Public Health, and Statecraft in Twentieth-Century U.S. History, Institute of the Americas
Pandemics, Public Health, and Statecraft in Twentieth-Century U.S. History July 4-5, 2022, Institute of the Americas, University College London Keynote Speakers: Professor Gary Gerstle, University of Cambridge Professor Beatrix Hoffman, Northern Illinois University The literature on modern American pandemics is vast and continues to unfold in new directions, as scholars of medicine pay closer attention to the cultural politics of public health and the complex links between capitalism, racism, and infectious diseases. Yet, coverage of epidemics among historians of U.S. statecraft remains far from even. The historiography of the twentieth-century American state says comparatively little about even world-historic outbreaks like the 1918 Influenza pandemic, probably because of an ingrained assumption that epidemics are peripheral, episodic events that do not influence state formation. This conference aims to repair this neglect by setting forth why the history of infectious disease deserves to figure more prominently in accounts of the twentieth-century state. […]