Historians have long argued that the value of their field lay in its applicability to the present day. It serves society best, according to a recent formulation, as a guide that encourages broad perspective and careful judgement among policy makers in the public sphere. The judgments appear particularly appropriate now, as the world endures a […]
Honolulu’s Honuakaha smallpox cemetery, photographed in 2013. The first outbreak of smallpox in 1853 took as many as 6,000 lives, eight percent of the Islands’ roughly 75,000 people. Hundreds are believed to be buried under the Kaka‘ako Fire Station parking lot, at the rear of photograph.
A few weeks ago I went out for my daily walk on Thursday evening just before 8pm. I had forgotten that since the current lockdown in the UK, this is the time set aside for the weekly Clap for our Carers campaign. It’s a public event to show appreciation of all NHS and frontline staff. […]
During recent weeks we have witnessed often abusive gatherings in the United States and Spain demanding that covid-19 restrictions be lifted. Flags are flown, anthems are sung, slogans are cheered, all in an effort to show that quarantine is a violation of deep, eternal, and patriotic principles. Public health is not the issue; freedom is. […]
In April 2020 U.S. President Donald Trump began to lash out at the World Health Organization, blaming it for what he claimed were missteps, failures, and prevarications in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. On April 14 he announced that U.S. funding for WHO would be frozen for 60-90 days while his administration conducted a […]
When politicians started calling the coronavirus an “invisible enemy”, it was obvious that the rhetoric accompanying the pandemic was moving from science to magic. Both Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have used the phrase: coined by the former on 16 March 2020, it had spread to the UK two days later. The misdirection of public […]
For a historian of religion, an interesting aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic has been witnessing the resurgence of popular interest in religious beliefs and practices across Europe that might have seemed archaic, alien and even downright odd before the changes wrought in our lives by the virus. The Middle Ages – that iconic period of […]
Living Lockdown as an academic historian has meant learning a great deal, and fast. There was the move to online teaching and student support, meetings to plan the first academic year with social isolation, and helping to keep research – and the training of historians – alive and meaningful. Like so many others it seems […]
Historians have long argued that the value of their field lay in its applicability to the present day. It serves society best, according to a recent formulation, as a guide that encourages broad perspective and careful judgement among policy makers in the public sphere. The judgments appear particularly appropriate now, as the world endures a […]
A few weeks ago I went out for my daily walk on Thursday evening just before 8pm. I had forgotten that since the current lockdown in the UK, this is the time set aside for the weekly Clap for our Carers campaign. It’s a public event to show appreciation of all NHS and frontline staff. […]
During recent weeks we have witnessed often abusive gatherings in the United States and Spain demanding that covid-19 restrictions be lifted. Flags are flown, anthems are sung, slogans are cheered, all in an effort to show that quarantine is a violation of deep, eternal, and patriotic principles. Public health is not the issue; freedom is. […]
In April 2020 U.S. President Donald Trump began to lash out at the World Health Organization, blaming it for what he claimed were missteps, failures, and prevarications in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. On April 14 he announced that U.S. funding for WHO would be frozen for 60-90 days while his administration conducted a […]
When politicians started calling the coronavirus an “invisible enemy”, it was obvious that the rhetoric accompanying the pandemic was moving from science to magic. Both Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have used the phrase: coined by the former on 16 March 2020, it had spread to the UK two days later. The misdirection of public […]
For a historian of religion, an interesting aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic has been witnessing the resurgence of popular interest in religious beliefs and practices across Europe that might have seemed archaic, alien and even downright odd before the changes wrought in our lives by the virus. The Middle Ages – that iconic period of […]
Living Lockdown as an academic historian has meant learning a great deal, and fast. There was the move to online teaching and student support, meetings to plan the first academic year with social isolation, and helping to keep research – and the training of historians – alive and meaningful. Like so many others it seems […]
To receive updates on History Reflections news from Cambridge University Press and Fifteen Eighty Four, please join our email list below. We will not disclose your email address to any third party
