‘Killing cockroaches with a nuclear weapon’: The Victorian Pandemic Management Bill.
On 10 February at 1600 CET, Binoy Kampmark, RMIT University Melbourne, will discuss the proposed arrogation of vast powers to the Victorian state government in Australia, the creation of what would be a permanent emergency powers regime that could be invoked at any time by the executive, irrespective of evidence of a pandemic. Dr. Kampmark will consider the attempts to amend the proposed legislation, the large protests against it, and the various arguments in pandemic governance.
Binoy Kampmark is a contributing editor to CounterPunch, Senior Lecturer in Global Studies at RMIT University, and former Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge.
On Thursday, 3 February, at 1600 CET, Chinmay Tumbe, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, will present:
India and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Mortality Estimates and Correlates
India was the worst affected country in the influenza pandemic of 1918, losing more people than the global battle death toll of World War I. This paper uses a new dataset with more complete coverage than previous studies by incorporating the princely states and using the inter-censal estimation method, estimates mortality to be closer to 20 million, higher than previous estimates. It also analyses the regional variation in influenza mortality and attributes it to undernutrition linked to an acute drought preceding the influenza attack and the accompanying price surge, and compares this explanation with others provided in the literature. Finally, the talk also compares India’s 1918 experience with that of 2021, when it faced its largest shock to all-cause mortality in a century.
Christina Stylegar Torjussen will present: “Kong Sverre – The Death Ship”
The influenza pandemic in 1918 killed approximately 15,000 people in Norway. Among those were recruits in the Norwegian navy stationed on an exercise and accommodation ship called “Kong Sverre” outside Horten, Norway. Of the 500 recruits on the ship, 158 were infected and 42 died, corresponding to a lethality of 27%. In my master thesis (to be presented in May 2022), I try to figure out the reasons for this high mortality on “Kong Sverre”. In my talk, I present in-progress findings on possible mechanisms for the experiences on the ship.
Christina Stylegar Torjussen is a student at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an affiliated master student at PANSOC. She is currently working on her master thesis in history.
We are delighted to announce the spring webinar series. All talks will be held Thursdays at 1600 CET unless otherwise noted. Please contact jessicad@oslomet.no if you need a link.
27 January: Christina Torjussen, University of South-Eastern Norway and PANSOC, “Kong Sverre – The Death Ship.”
3 February: Chinmay Tumbe, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, “India and 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Mortality Estimates and Correlates.”
10 February: Binoy Kampmark, RMIT University Melbourne, “‘Killing cockroaches with a nuclear weapon’: The Victorian Pandemic Management Bill.”
24 February, 1400 CET: David Roth, The Australian National University, “The effects of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic on mental patients in New South Wales – Work-In-Progress.”
10 March: Tamara Giles-Vernick, Institut Pasteur: “Complex local vulnerabilities and the COVID-19 pandemic in France.” (Rescheduled from fall)
17 March: Margarida Pereira, PANSOC, “The 2020 Syndemic of Obesity and COVID-19 in an Urbanized World.”
31 March: Lianne Tripp, University of Northern British Columbia: “The 1918/19 Influenza: Hidden Heterogeneity in an Island Population.” (Rescheduled from fall)
7 April: Amanda Wissler, University of South Carolina & Cleveland Museum of Natural History, “The Long-Term Impacts of Pandemic Disease: Health and Survival after the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.”
21 April: Jord Hanus, University of Antwerp, “Socioeconomic Status and Epidemic Mortality in an Urban Environment: Mechelen (Belgium), 1600-1900”
28 April: Vibeke Narverud Nyborg, University of South-Eastern Norway and PANSOC, The exploration of state health legislations as possible driving forces to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the 1918 pandemic in different Norwegian regions.”
5 May: Ben Schneider, TBA
12 May: Carolyn Orbann, University of Missouri, “Co-circulating respiratory diseases at the end of the 1918 influenza pandemic.”
Join us December 16 at 1600 CET to hear John Eicher present “A Digital History Approach to Analyzing Memories of the 1918 Flu Pandemic.” (contact jessicad@oslomet.no if you need a link)
Humanistic accounts of the 1918 influenza pandemic generally fall under two categories: socio-cultural histories that rely on journalistic and artistic sources and political/administrative histories that rely on government and bureaucratic sources. Both approaches overwhelmingly focus on urban populations and are framed at the regional or national levels. Working with a collection of nearly 1,000 first-hand accounts of the 1918 flu gathered from across 10 countries, my project, “The Sword Outside, the Plague Within,” aims to be the first transnational socio-cultural history of the pandemic in the European context. This presentation provides an overview of the digital tools and methods that I am using to gather data from the letters, and it demonstrates how researchers can use quantitative digital history techniques for qualitative analysis.
John Eicher is an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at Pennsylvania State University at Altoona. Focusing on the comparative and transnational, his research focuses on the movements of people and diseases around the world. His current project, “The Sword Outside, the Plague Within: The 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Europe,” compares the cultural impact of the 1918 flu across ten European countries using over 1,000 first-hand survivors’ accounts. This work was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, Penn State University and the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, where he served as a Marie S. Curie Junior Fellow during the 2020-21 academic year.
Catch up on the latest webinar with Madeleine Mant from the University of Toronto Mississauga, who presented “Going Viral: COVID-19 and Risk in Young Adult Health Behaviour Models.”
Madeleine Mant, University of Toronto Mississauga: “Going Viral: COVID-19 and Risk in Young Adult Health Behaviour Models.”
This talk will explore the University of Toronto COVID-19 Student Survey, the first in Canada to capture survey and interview data concerning youths’ reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study tracks students’ self-reported anxiety, media use, effects of social distancing on their lives and educational experience, health behaviours, vaccine confidence, and their contextualization of the pandemic through time using iterative surveys and semi-structured interviews. The first survey opened on March 20, 2020, four days after the University of Toronto cancelled all in-person undergraduate classes. Subsequent surveys and interviews were completed three, six, 12, and 18 months after the closure of the university, allowing for longitudinal investigation of students’ impressions of this public health crisis.
Dr. Madeleine Mant is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her research focuses on the lived experience of trauma and infectious disease through time, drawing upon bioarchaeological, archival, and modern qualitative datasets.
