The 1918 Influenza Pandemic: History, Narrative and Context

8:45-10:15 a.m.
The William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education

Dr. Allison Aiello

8:45-8:50 a.m.
Session Host and Moderator: Allison Aiello, PhD, Professor, Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, UNC-Chapel Hill

8:50-9:20 a.m.
“The 1918 Flu Pandemic: A Worldwide Historical Perspective”
Howard Markel, MD, PhD, George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine, University of Michigan

Dr. Howard Markel

Howard Markel, MD, PhD, is Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School. He is also professor of pediatrics, psychiatry, public health management and policy, history, and English literature and language. His work reaches a wide range of audiences and has had broad impact on national and international health policy and on the public’s understanding of medicine. As principal historical consultant on pandemic preparedness for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), his work provided the evidence base for many community mitigation strategies employed by the World Health Organization, the CDC, the Mexican Ministry of Health and all levels of health departments around the globe during the 2009 influenza pandemic. He is Editor-in-Chief of The 1918-1919 American Influenza Pandemic: A Digital Encyclopedia and Archive, one of the largest collections of historical documents ever assembled on a single epidemic (www.influenzaarchive.org), and author of When Germs Travel; Quarantine! and An Anatomy of Addiction. His new book, Corn Flakes, about the Kellogg brothers, will be published this fall. Dr. Markel is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a 2015 Guggenheim fellow and a frequent contributor to The New York Times, PBS NewsHour.org and other national media.

Selected publications:

1. When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed (Pantheon Books/Alfred A. Knopf, 2004; paperback Vintage/Random House, 2005)
2. Markel, H., Stern, A.M., Navarro, J.A., Michalsen, J.R.: A Historical Assessment of Nonpharmaceutical Disease Containment Strategies Employed by Selected U.S. Communities during the Second Wave of the 1918-1920 Influenza Epidemic. U.S. Department of Defense/Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Advanced Systems and Concepts Office, DTRA01- 03-D-0017. Filed January 31, 2006. Available from www.dtra.mil/asco/DTRAFinalInfluenzaReport.pdf.
3. Stern, A.M., Cetron, M.S., Markel, H. “The 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic in the United States: Lessons Learned and Challenges Exposed.” (Special Issue). Public Health Reports (Volume 125, Supplement No. 3, 2010).

9:20-9:40 a.m.
“Narrative Frames and Contagion: How They Shape Our Collective Response to Pandemics”
Priscilla Wald, PhD, R. Florence Brinkley Professor of English, Duke University

Dr. Priscilla Wald

Priscilla Wald, PhD, also serves as Margaret Taylor Smith Director of the Program in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at Duke University. She is the author of Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative (Duke, 2008) and Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form (Duke, 1995); she also is the co-editor of The American Novel 1870-1940, Volume 6, Oxford History of the Novel in English. Wald’s professional service includes co-editing the America and the Long Nineteenth Century series at NYU Press, serving as head of the faculty board of Duke University Press, on the Editorial Board of Penn Studies in Literature and Science, as Senior Editor of American Literature for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, and on the board of the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine at Hong Kong University; she also co-directs the First Book Institute at Penn State’s Center for American Literary Studies. She currently is working on a monograph entitled Human Being After Genocide.

Selected publications:

1. Wald, P. Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative. Duke University Press, 2008.
2. Wald, P. “Viral cultures: Microbes and politics in the cold war.” Zombie Theory: A Reader. January 1, 2017. 33-62.
3. Wald, P. “Immigrant Literature and the Immigrant Experience.” Immigrants in American History: Arrival, Adaptation, and Integration. Ed. E Barkan. ABC-Clio, 2013. 1839-55.

9:40-10 a.m.
“The Historical Context of the 1918 Flu Pandemic in North Carolina and the South”
James L. Leloudis, PhD, MA, Professor, History; Peter T. Grauer Associate Dean for Honors Carolina; Director, James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence, UNC-Chapel Hill

Dr. James Leloudis

James Leloudis, PhD, earned a bachelor’s degree in history with highest honors from UNC in 1977, a master’s degree from Northwestern University in 1979 and a doctoral degree from UNC in 1989. His publications include Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (1987), Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self, and Society in North Carolina, 1880-1920 (1996), and To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty and Inequality in 1960s America (2010). Those works have received a number of awards, including the American Historical Association’s Albert J. Beveridge Prize, the Organization of American Historians’ Merle Curti Social History and Louis Pelzer Memorial Awards, and Cornell University’s Philip Taft Labor History Award. Leloudis currently is working on a history of voting rights in the South and the story of slavery at the University of North Carolina.

Selected publications:

1. To Right These Wrongs: The North Carolina Fund and the Battle to End Poverty and Injustice in 1960s America, with Robert Korstad (University of North Carolina Press, 2010)
2. North Carolina (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2003)
3. Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self, and Society in North Carolina, 1880–1920 (University of North Carolina Press, 1996)
4. Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World with Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Robert Korstad, Mary Murphy, Lu Ann Jones and Christopher B. Daly (University of North Carolina Press, 1987 and 2000; W. W. Norton, 1989)

10-10:15 a.m.
Moderated questions/discussion