The Spanish Influenza of 1918

FAIN: FV-50404-14

Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA 24061-2000)
Tom Ewing (Project Director: March 2014 to May 2016)

A three-week seminar for sixteen school teachers on the history and impact of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.

The seminar will provide teachers with an opportunity to read and discuss the most recent scholarship on the 1918 Spanish Flu written by American and world historians as well as interdisciplinary studies by epidemiologists, demographers, and public health scholars. In addition, participants will have opportunities to pursue their own research topics, using easily accessible primary sources from online newspaper databases, archived oral histories, and documentation from public health authorities. To facilitate this original research, the seminar will spend one week in Washington DC, where participants will meet with specialists at the National Library of Medicine, the National Archives, and the Library of Congress. Seminar participants will acquire a broader understanding of the role of disease in history, an awareness of how historical precedents inform plans for dealing with global pandemics, and an appreciation of a complicated topic that engages scholarly and general interest.