Pandemic Re-Awakenings

Pandemic Re-Awakenings offers a multi-level and multi-faceted exploration of a century of remembering, forgetting, and rediscovering the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, arguably the greatest catastrophe in human history. Twenty-three researchers present original perspectives by critically investigating the hitherto unexplored vicissitudes of memory in the interrelated spheres of personal, communal, medical, and cultural histories in different national and transnational settings across the globe. The volume reveals how, even though the Great Flu was overshadowed by the commemorative culture of the Great War, recollections of the pandemic persisted over time to re-emerge towards the centenary of the 'Spanish' Flu and burst into public consciousness following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapters chart historiographical neglect (while acknowledging the often-unnoticed dialogues between scientific and historical discourses), probe silences, and trace vestiges of social and cultural memories that long remained outside of what was considered collective memory.

Guy Beiner is a professor of modern history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev who specializes in the history of remembering and forgetting. He holds a PhD from the National University of Ireland and was a Government of Ireland Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, as well as a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, a Government of Hungary Scholar at the Central European University, a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Oxford and a Burns Scholar at Boston College. His books on social memory/forgetting and folk history have won multiple international awards.

- Preface: History, Memory, and the Flu - Introduction: The Great Flu between Remembering and Forgetting - PART I: PERSONAL HISTORIES - 1: Hannah Mawdsley: Remembering the 'Forgotten' Pandemic: Richard Collier's Collection of Personal Testimonies - 2: David Killingray: Burdens of Grief and Fractured Communities: Personal Memories and Communal Responses to the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19 in Non-Literate Societies - 3: Howard Phillips: The Silence of the Survivors: Why Did South African Survivors of the 'Spanish' Flu Epidemic Not Talk About It? - 4: Claudio Bertolli Filho: 'Above all else there was fear': Recollections of the 'Spanish' Flu in São Paulo, Brazil - 5: Ida Milne: Changing Narratives of 'That' Pandemic: Re-Engaging with Oral Histories for the Centenary of the Great Flu in Ireland - PART II: COMMUNAL HISTORIES - 6: Lukasz Mieszkowski: The Overshadowing of the Memory of 'Spanish' Flu in Poland - 7: Utz Thimm: 'When two crises meet each other': Remembering 'Spanish' Flu in the Low Countries - 8: Kandace Bogaert with Mark Humphries: 'Remember me to the folks': The Great War and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Canada - 9: Geoffrey W. Rice: 'The Fell Plague of Last Year': Remembering and Forgetting the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in New Zealand - 10: David Arnold: Representation and Remembrance: The 1918-19 Influenza Epidemic in India - 11: Peter Hobbins: 'The pneumonic influenza is just part of my life': Fostering Community Histories of the 'Spanish' Influenza Pandemic in Australia - PART III: MEDICAL HISTORIES - 12: Mark Honigsbaum: Pandemic Exchanges: Narrating the 'Spanish' Flu at the Intersection of Science and History - 13: Jeffrey S. Reznick: The Past, Present, and Future of Memory: Medical Histories of the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic in the United States - 14: E. Thomas Ewing: The 'Ispanka' in Historical Context: The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in the Soviet Union - 15: Robert Peckham: 'Huge but Unknown': China in the Memory of the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic - PART IV: CULTURAL HISTORIES - 16: Samuel Kline Cohn, Jr.: Pandemics and Comparative Forgetfulness: The Great Influenza and the Black Death - 17: Steffen Bruendel: Between the Great War and the Great Flu: The 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic and the Contemporary Avant-Garde - 18: Cynthia Gabbay: Traces in the Archive of a Great Oblivion: Ibero-American Representations of the 'Spanish' Flu - 19: Nancy K. Bristow: The Practices of Social Forgetting: Rewriting, Obscuring, and Silencing the 1918 Influenza Epidemic in the United States - Conclusion: Rediscovering the Great Flu, between Pre-forgetting and Post-forgetting - Afterword: The Great Flu and Modern Memory