COVID-Calls: History of Science Collections and COVID-19

The Library & Museum at the American Philosophical Society and the Linda Hall Library are excited to collaborate on a series of COVID-Calls focused on what library and archival materials in the history of science, technology, and medicine can teach us about COVID-19. 

COVID-Calls is a daily discussion series about the COVID-19 pandemic featuring a range of experts hosted by Scott Gabriel Knowles, Professor at Drexel University. New episodes are streamed live Monday through Friday; past episodes may be watched online via YouTube or downloaded as podcasts. Visit the COVID-Calls website to learn more and to catch up on past discussions. 

Join us on February 3, 4, and 5 for conversations featuring Lisa Browar, President of Linda Hall Library and Patrick Spero, Librarian & Director of the Library & Museum at the American Philosophical Society, as well as historians of science and research fellows as they reflect on the impact of COVID-19 on their scholarship. A full lineup is included below. 

Registration is not required to attend. Please join the calls by subscribing to COVID-Calls on YouTube here or livestream the discussion using the following channels:

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgxa_-w98BhAIiwbw2dxKlQ 

Facebook Live https://www.facebook.com/covidcalls1 

Periscope https://www.pscp.tv/USofDisaster/1MYxNmZomVQJw 

Wednesday, February 3 (5:00 - 6:00 p.m. EST)

Research Libraries and COVID-19

Featuring Lisa Browar (President of Linda Hall Library), and Patrick Spero, (Librarian and Director of the APS’s Library & Museum)

Thursday, February 4 (4:00 - 5:00 p.m. EST)

Biomedicine in the Archives

Featuring Joanna Radin (Associate Professor of History of Medicine at Yale University), and Robin Wolfe Scheffler (Associate Professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Friday, February 5 (5:00 - 6:00 p.m. EST)

Dissertating About Healthcare During a Pandemic

Featuring Nicole Schroeder (Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Virginia), and Andrew Seaton (Ph.D. Candidate at New York University)

About the experts:

Lisa Browar is President of the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology. Prior to accepting this position, she was University Librarian at The New School in New York City from 2002 until 2008. In 1996, Lisa was named the third Director of the Lilly Library at Indiana University (Bloomington), and the first woman to fill this position. She has also held positions at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, Vassar College, and served as Brooke Russell Astor Chief Librarian for Rare Books and Manuscripts at the New York Public Library.

She is a member of the Grolier Club, the Association of College and Research Libraries, where she currently serves as Chair of the Independent Research Libraries Association, and has served as both secretary and chair of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). She was co-editor of the ACRL journal, RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage from 1997 until 2003, and has published and lectured widely on topics concerning literary biography, manuscript curatorship, the history of the publishing industry, and the post-9/11 philanthropic environment. She is a consultant to other libraries and cultural institutions on matters of reorganization and staff optimization.

Patrick Spero is the Librarian and Director of the American Philosophical Society Library in Philadelphia. As a scholar of early American history, Dr. Spero specializes in the era of the American Revolution. He has published over a dozen essays and reviews on the topic. He is the author of Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776 (Norton, 2018) and Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) and the edited anthology The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Prior to his appointment at the American Philosophical Society, Dr. Spero taught at Williams College where he served on the faculty of the History and Leadership Studies Department and received recognition for his integration of new technology in the classroom.

Dr. Spero has also held the position of Historian at the David Library of the Revolution and served on their Board of Trustees. He currently serves on the board of the Abraham Lincoln Foundation and the Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, the Council of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the Cabinet of George Washington’s Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, and on the Academic Advisory Board of Benjamin Franklin’s House in London. 

Joanna Radin is a historian of life and human sciences at Yale University, where she is Associate Professor of History of Medicine and a core member of the Program in History of Science & Medicine. There, she is also affiliated with the Departments of History, Anthropology, and American Studies as well as the Programs in Ethnicity, Race & Migration and Religion & Modernity. She is the author of the book Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood (Chicago 2017) and co-editor (with Emma Kowal) of Cryopolitics: Freezing Life in a Melting World (MIT 2017). In addition to numerous academic journals, her writing has also appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books and The New Inquiry. She is currently at work on a book, tentatively titled, Surreal Science: Michael Crichton, Mass Media and the Manipulation of Modern Life. Radin is co-editor (with Adrian Johns) of the Science as Culture series at University of Chicago Press.

Robin Wolfe Scheffler is an Associate Professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. His first book, A Contagious Cause:The American Hunt for Cancer Viruses and the Rise of Molecular Medicine (University of Chicago Press, 2019) examined the century-long effort to identify a human cancer virus and develop a vaccine. His current research, supported by the National Science Foundation focuses on the history of the biotechnology industry in the Greater Boston Area.

Nicole Schroeder is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia and a current Dolores Liebmann Fund Fellow. In 2018-19 she held the Friends of the APS Predoctoral Fellowship in Early American History (to 1840) at the American Philosophical Society and from 2019-2020 she held the Program in Early American Economy and Society Predoctoral Fellowship at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Nicole studies the history of disability, welfare, and medicine in early America. 

Andrew Seaton is a Ph.D. candidate in history at New York University. His dissertation explores the relationship between politics, society, and universal health care through a transnational history of the British National Health Service (NHS). Andrew argues that this pivotal postwar institution demonstrates overlooked endurances to social democratic structures and political cultures. This interpretation challenges historical narratives that map the rising hegemony of late twentieth-century neoliberalism. His research scales from the everyday work that embedded communitarian ideals in hospital wards and health centers across Britain, to the NHS's wider significance in trans-Atlantic discussions about health reform, processes of decolonization, and the movement of medical professionals across borders. Andrew has published articles in Twentieth Century British History and the Bulletin of the History of Medicine.

About the Host:

Scott Gabriel Knowles is a historian of modern cities, technology and public policy–with a particular focus on risk and disaster. His most recent book is The Disaster Experts: Mastering Risk in Modern America (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). He is the editor of Imagining Philadelphia: Edmund Bacon and the Future of the City (UPenn Press, 2009); and has published articles, essays and book reviews in The Next American City, Isis, History and Technology, Public Works Management and Policy, Technology and Culture, Business History Review, Enterprise and Society, The Smart Set, and Annals of Science. His opinion pieces have run in The New York Times, The Hill, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and he has been a media commentator for such outlets as TIME.com, Al Jazeera, NPR, FOX News, Inside Edition and CNBC.com.