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What do a geneticist and a historian have in common? A passion for reconstructing the past and understanding its implications for the present and future.
Michael Worobey is known around the world for his work on viral pandemics and his reconstructions of the origins and timelines of viruses, including COVID-19. Emma Perez is an award-winning Chicana, feminist historian and author who examines how big events change history, how we remember and make sense of them, and who is missing from the narrative.
In the first talk of the series, Worobey and Perez team up for a wide-ranging discussion of how they seek the truth – from gene sequencing to archival fieldwork – and tell the untold stories of the past. How will COVID-19 be remembered in 100 years? Or, like the 1918 pandemic, will it be largely forgotten? How is our framing of this pandemic different now than it was even two months ago? And when there are conflicting narratives, whose stories will remain? And, finally, as we deal with a stacking of critical events – including the pandemic, a Presidential election, a wobbling economy, and racial strife – how will our understanding of this moment in time forever change the trajectory of our world.