With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

You're Witnessing History: Minnesota Historians Need Your Help to Document the Pandemic As It Happens

Decades from now, historians may look back at 2020 and say that was the year that we stopped shaking hands.

Or the year that working from home became the norm.

Or the year Americans stopped being squeamish about bidets.

History is always happening, of course, but it’s clear that we’re cursed to be living in particularly interesting times, so interesting that they may become a watershed, a dividing line of our lives: before the pandemic, after the pandemic.

That’s why historians around the state and the country aren’t waiting to begin documenting the impact of this global crisis.

While the pandemic has been raging, curators, historians and archivists at institutions from the Minnesota Historical Society to Carleton College have been gathering blog posts, journal entries, photographs, drawings, videos and artifacts like handmade masks and T-shirts.

Read entire article at Minneapolis Star-Tribune