The Histories and Politics of Pandemics Workshop

On 9 February 2024, Medical Humanities hosted an interdisciplinary workshop on “The Histories and Politics of Pandemics” at Radcliffe Humanities (TORCH). Organised by Nikita Arora, the workshop featured Kavita Sivaramakrishnan (Columbia) as the main speaker with Mark Harrison (Oxford), Caesar Atuire (Oxford), and Nikita Arora (Oxford) as commentators, chaired by Erica Charters (Oxford). Professor Sivaramakrishnan presented her work-in-progress paper, “The Politics of Epidemics, Pedagogies, and Immunity 1890-1930s (Madras)” that discussed the plague epidemic in Madras during this period.

Erica Charters, Academic Lead of Medical Humanities, introduced the workshop and welcomed the audience. Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University presented an outline of current research into the history and politics of pandemics, focusing particularly on the concept of immunity and how this should be interpreted in British colonial India.  She opened with a methodological discussion on studying epidemics, and outlined how histories of epidemics are not only disease-histories, but also histories of precarity and vulnerability – including immunological vulnerability. Whereas most colonial histories of infectious diseases posit binaries between a colonial-technocratic states (for example through coercive immunisation) and resistance against the state (for example through protests), Professor Sivaramakrishnan urged the audience to look beyond such binaries and disciplinary boundaries. She analysed three sites of pedagogical discourse on immunity between 1890 to 1930 in Madras: colonial sources such as plague primers and tracts, upper-caste and middle-class writing on health and prevention of diseases, and Tamil Cintu poetry and songs sung by marginalised castes. Particularly, her presentation discussed W.G. King, sanitary commissioner of Madras from 1892 to 1905, and his efforts at making Madras a city immune from the plague, as well as the politics of his pedagogical instruction.

Nikita Arora, Caesar Atuire, and Mark Harrison offered their comments and questions, drawing out further themes of methodology and source material in understanding the course of pandemics as well as colonialism, after which Professor Sivaramakrishnan took questions from the audience. This allowed for an energetic discussion of new themes and directions in the histories and politics of pandemics such as emotion-history and labour-history, the nature of the Covid-19 pandemic in Africa, differences between colonial and post-colonial pedagogies of health, the contingent nature of positions taken up by people during pandemics, as well as broader questions as to how easily one can distinguish between colonial and (domestic) state activity when it comes to pandemics and public health.  

 

Medical Humanities Research Hub, TORCH Research Hubs