Quarto appuntamento del ciclo di seminari online Two Centuries of Pasteur!

Il quarto appuntamento del seminario Two Centuries of Pasteur, che si terrà in modalità telematica il giorno 23 febbraio 2023, alle ore 17 (CET), vedrà ospite Aro Velmet (University of Southern California; University of Tartu), con un intervento dal titolo: Pasteur’s Empire: Yellow fever vaccination and the politics of colonial infrastructure in West Africa.

Abstract: After World War II, the newly created World Health Organization authorized two vaccines for the prevention of yellow fever, a deadly hemorrhagic disease that was endemic primarily in West Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. One of those vaccines, the Dakar strain, was increasingly associated with sometimes fatal cases of encephalitis in children. Yet the vaccine was maintained in use until the 1970s, when it was displaced by the safer 17-D strain. This talk surveys the debates over the use of the Dakar strain, arguing that in order to understand its durability in the postwar years, we must understand the colonial origins of the knowledge and logistical infrastructures that enabled its use – particularly in West Africa.

Aro Velmet is a historian of modern Europe and empires. He has published on memory politics in the Baltics, beauty culture in interwar France and its colonies, and anxieties over transnational governance and “gender theory” in contemporary Europe. He is an editor of the Estonian cultural monthly Vikerkaar, a member of the Eurozine network of European cultural journals. He is the author of Pasteur’s Empire. Bacteriology and Politics in France, Its Colonies, and the World (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Tutti gli incontri possono essere seguiti da remoto al seguente link: https://meet.google.com/bzt-ucgf-ryc

Il ciclo seminariale è organizzato da: Mauro Capocci (Università di Pisa), Maria Conforti (Sapienza Università di Roma), Antonio Clericuzio (Università di Roma Tre).