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February 21, 2025
Archival Research and the Importance of Physical Documents
Archival research offers a unique and invaluable experience beyond the digital realm, providing a tactile connection to the past. This post by Glenn Summers delivers a tactile and analytical discussion of some sources on the 1913 strike at Leith Docks, a key event during the UK’s Great Labour Unrest.
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June 23, 2022
JOTPY Has Diverse Oral Histories For Pandemic Research
Blog post by Jason Inskeep
During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a constant stream of information barraged humans with alarming news, death statistics, and polarizing political stances. A wide variety of social media, forums, and video conferencing programs provided people an outlet.
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November 4, 2021
Fear: The Human Experience that Binds Us
Blog post by Pamela Zupo
Whether it is called the plague, the Black Death, or the Coronavirus, widespread disease has a way of generating fear and outright terror among those living within its invisible presence. Epidemics, such as the pestilence that afflicted the Iberian Peninsula of Spain during the late sixteenth century still resonate with historical truths that can be felt five hundred years later.
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October 21, 2021
Pharmacy in the Middle Ages
Blog post by Keisha Gordon
The past can indicate future events. Pandemics such as the COVID-19 may be new to us but they are not new to the historical record. The 1918 Flu, or the Black Death of the Middle Ages, are familiar to some.
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September 29, 2021
Uncertainty and Fear as a Universal Conditions
The Great Castilian Plague of 1596-1601 and the Covid-19 Pandemic of today
By Sarah Peterson
Not much has changed in human history between the Castilian Plague of 1596-1601 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-now. Sure, we understand science and data more than our ancestors, but common themes abound between our shared experience today and the lives of those caught-up in the late sixteenth-century Castilian pestilence.
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September 15, 2021
Tasting History: Analysis of a 16th Century Spanish Recipe
Blog post by Ellie Cormack
In the midst of the incessant COVID-19 pandemic, I offer you a brief diversion to a wildly popular phenomenon on the internet today: food blogs! But this is no ordinary food blog about gourmet mac and cheese or my best chocolate chip cookie recipe.
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September 1, 2021
The Acorn: Food to Some, Inedible to Others
Blog post by Jason Inskeep
As a person who claims to love exploring cultures, traveling, and trying different foods, I failed. I recently realized that as a Native Arizonan I had only tried one food from my home state’s Indigenous culinary tradition—Fry Bread.
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June 21, 2021
Street Art in the Plague Years
Blog post by Monica Ruth
Shuttered businesses, deserted streets, and contagion among the people… elements of disarray and decay, signals and signs of the end of – or at least pause from – familiar economic and social patterns. These changes have revealed a wellspring, sparking and spawning of new life and advantageous growth in street art.
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June 6, 2021
Fight or Die Trying – Indigenous Resilience and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Blog post by Robin Keagle
“Kimberly in Red” from Artist Nayan Lafond, A Journal of the Plague Year ArchiveGenocide, stolen lands, and broken promises. Indigenous Peoples have a long history of being silenced. Their voices are muted and are often missing from the archives.
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May 23, 2021
“Kung Flu,” the Power of Words, and the Impact on AAPI Identity
Blog post by Kathryn Jue
Asian and Pacific Islanders are fighting two pandemics – COVID-19 and anti-Asian racism.[i] The rise of anti-Asian crimes is now a focal point in a pandemic year, but this is not something that came out of nowhere.[ii]