On Monday, January 10, 2022 at 7pm on Zoom, the Westborough Historical Society will present their Civic Club Lecture: “Remembering the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in the Age of COVID,” by Professor Ben Railton, Professor of English and American Studies at Fitchburg State University. This lecture explores why the “Spanish Flu” of 1918-1921 was both misunderstood in its own era and largely forgotten for the next century, although five times as many Americans died in this global pandemic than did in WWI.
Prof. Railton is a dynamic speaker with a passion for American collective memories and national narratives. He is the author of six books, most recently, Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism (2021). His scholarship includes the daily “American Studies” blog, the bimonthly “Considering History” column for the Saturday Evening Post, and contributions to online conversations including HuffPost and We’re History. He’s also a prolific public scholarly tweeter @AmericanStudier.
This program is generously sponsored by the Westborough Civic Club. It is free and open to the public. We hope you can attend! To register for this Zoom presentation, please click this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUudu2rqjwoHNLW2kBJwiSqb8JShu4DY9n2