Timely History Class Connects 1918 Flu Outbreak to COVID-19 Pandemic

As communities across the globe confront the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of Virginia Tech students is exploring the history of another major outbreak.

The 1918 influenza epidemic has served as the central research project for Professor of History Thomas Ewing’s Topics in the History of Data in Social Context course.

When Ewing, an expert on the history of epidemics, selected the research project last fall, he didn’t anticipate the themes of the course would dominate daily life in the spring.

After the March transition to online learning, students in Ewing’s history class have continued to pore over news articles and other data related to the 1918 outbreak. The class is now preparing to collaborate with the National Library of Medicine on a virtual symposium based on the students’ research.

The program, “Reporting, Recording, and Remembering the 1918 Influenza Epidemic,” scheduled for April 29, is made possible through the National Library of Medicine’s formal partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities to collaborate on research, education, and career initiatives. This partnership has also resulted in a summer seminar for K–12 teachers on the 1918 flu pandemic and a workshop and book on viral networks.

The class is focusing on three main themes that directly connect the historical lessons of 1918 to the current challenges of COVID-19: how newspapers reported on the epidemic during the most severe weeks; the effect of social distancing policies implemented in cities and states; and how communities recovered from the worst effects of the epidemic.