March 25, 2021
History department to host 2021 virtual Parrish Colloquium on global histories of plague
The history department announces the upcoming Parrish Lecture, featuring independent historian Monica H. Green, who will present "Neolithic to New World: Global Histories of Plague" from 7-8:30 p.m. CDT Tuesday, April 13, via Zoom. The event is free and open to the public.
Something extraordinary has happened in infectious disease history recently. Even before COVID-19 arrived on the world scene in December 2019, a sometimes awkward alliance had started between scientists and humanists to reframe the histories of the world's major infectious diseases, ones that had killed millions, disrupted economies and shifted the power dynamics of major empires. In just a decade's time, we have new histories of smallpox, leprosy, tuberculosis and other diseases that have afflicted world populations for centuries. But the earliest and most dramatic developments have come in the field of plague history, cause of the Black Death and a disease now found on every continent save Australia and Antarctica.
This talk will summarize the developments in genetics that have laid the foundation for a new evolutionary history of Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. It will then recount the work of historians who have seized upon the findings of the scientists and advanced our understanding of plague's history, showing that it likely proved more widespread and more lethal than we ever imagined before. As the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us, no one field or methodology can provide us with all the answers we need to address the biological, economic and social havoc that pandemics cause. New approaches to old histories in fact show us how to transcend disciplines to answer questions of global import and pressing urgency.
Login information is available on the history department's events page.
Contact Professor David Defries at ddefries@k-state.edu with any questions.