History in the Time of Pandemic: A Conversation with Paul Ramirez

The History Department is delighted to invite Paul Ramirez to present his work on epidemic disease outbreaks, vaccination campaigns, and the promises and paradoxes of Enlightenment medicine in colonial Mexico. Professor Ramirez will discuss how new approaches to epidemic disease management and public health highlight questions of trust, uncertainty, and the centrality of religion to medical innovation and discovery. The conversation will also assess historical research on epidemics in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and its local and global ramifications.

Paul Ramírez (PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 2010) is a specialist in the history of Mexico. He has published articles and book chapters on the coordination of response to disease epidemics, the cultural and religious aspects of medical technology, and the politics of reform in Bourbon Mexico. His book monograph, titled Enlightened Immunity: Mexico's Experiments with Disease Prevention in the Age of Reason (Stanford University Press, 2018), examines the rituals, genres, and upheavals in medicine and politics that accompanied efforts to adopt preventive methods in rural Mexico.

For more information on this speaker:  https://history.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core-faculty/paul-ramirez.html