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History may not repeat itself, but sometimes the past can shed surprising light on the present.

From the Black Death to AIDS and COVID-19, human societies have struggled to confront deadly epidemics. How have we reacted to these outbreaks in the past, and what can past outbreaks teach us about our current crisis?

Join us for this virtual edition of The World Today, as David S. Barnes, Associate Professor of the History and Sociology of Science, discusses these and more questions from the history of epidemics in conversation with Michael C. Horowitz, Perry World House Interim Director and Professor of Political Science.

SPEAKER

David S. Barnes is Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Making of a Social Disease: Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century France (University of California Press, 1995) and The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), as well as several articles about the history, culture, and politics of public health. He is currently writing a history of Philadelphia’s Lazaretto quarantine station (1799-1895), and working to preserve the Lazaretto historic site on the Delaware River in Tinicum Township.