A Bibliography of Historians' Responses to COVID-19

As the novel coronavirus began to spread in the United States, people across the country turned to historians for crucial insights regarding the history of epidemics and pandemics. From the Black Death in the 14th century to the 1918 flu, historians have drawn from a wealth of historical material to illustrate the range of human, governmental, societal, and scientific responses to massive disease outbreaks over time. As the COVID-19 crisis continued to unfold, historians were quick to assess the economic, political, and social fallout from the pandemic as it took its devastating toll on American life. The American Historical Association is compiling a professionally vetted bibliography of historians’ responses to COVID-19 as a resource for the public, teachers, and scholars seeking historical perspectives on the current crisis and its local and global impacts.

The bibliography includes commentary and publications by historians in both scholarly and popular periodical literature; recorded lectures and webcasts; and digitized primary source materials from past epidemics and pandemics. In amassing these references, the AHA seeks to provide a space where anyone, regardless of expertise, can find digital historical material relevant to the COVID-19 crisis. Educators will find the bibliography especially useful as a professionally vetted index of online resources amenable to remote instruction.

Part of “Confronting a Pandemic: Historians and COVID-19,” the bibliography is funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) CARES Grant. Special thanks to the History of Science Society and the American Association for the History of Medicine for their many contributions to this bibliography project.