The past year has been, in a word, unprecedented. What can history teach us about living through COVID-19?

On this episode, Professor Gina Buccola joins President Ali to talk about three courses that investigate how diseases shaped history.

Gina Buccola is a professor of English and chair of the humanities department. Through the Shakespeare Project of Chicago, Gina adapted a new, devastating eyewitness account of the 1603 plague. She and three actors will perform “News From Gravesend: The Wonderful Year” live over Zoom the week of January 18. Sign up to watch the free performances here.

Professor Celeste Chamberland’s course Epidemics and Urban Culture will explore the social and cultural history of epidemic disease in urban settings from the fourteenth century to the present.

Professor Stuart Warner’s course Pandemics, Philosophers and Poets will think through questions about pandemic diseases through readings from Thucydides, Lucretius, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Samuel Pepys, Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, and Hannah Arendt on loneliness and solitude.

In Professor Sandra Frink’s course Documenting COVID, students will create a documentary record of stories about our unprecedented global crisis by interviewing members of the Roosevelt community and residents in the Chicagoland area.