webinar register page

COVID-19, the Great Depression, & the Battle between Memory and Forgetting

Please join the Living New Deal-New York City Chapter for our final webinar of the year—a roundtable discussion exploring similarities and differences between the Great Depression and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Both the Great Depression and the COVID-19 pandemic raised profound questions about government responsibility for public health and welfare, but cultural and political responses to each differed dramatically. The trauma of the Great Depression was addressed vigorously by the New Deal, and for decades Democrats dominated American politics by invoking memories of the Dust Bowl and bread lines to affirm the value of activist government. In the years of COVID, however, responses to the pandemic have been disjointed; there is no widely shared understanding of what we’ve learned. Does recalling the Great Depression and New Deal help us understand the age of COVID? And what must we remember from the still-current pandemic to secure public health in the future?

Join three experts on medicine, public health and the New Deal for a conversation about the history and politics of remembering and forgetting, and their implications for how we think about our past and future in light of COVID.

Dec 7, 2022 08:00 PM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)