About the Project
We developed this project in Dr. Scot French’s HIS 6165 “Digital Tools for Historians” graduate class at the University of Central Florida in Fall 2019 and constructed this website to house the tool in Summer 2020.
Publicizing the maps on a website has several benefits, like the ability to add and elaborate on the context of the visualizations. The 1918 flu and the mortality rates it produced across society have meaning. Without context, the meaning is lost.
To properly visualize the past, one must add context and explain the data. This site provides such a space.
About Us
Andrew Kishuni
Andrew is a grad student in History at the University of Central Florida studying the history of disease in the twentieth-century U.S. His undergrad research focused on the 1918 flu pandemic in the U.S. South. His research interests include global health security, parasite-stress theory, and chemical and biological weapons policy.
Contact him at andrew.kishuni@ucf.edu.
Jesse Campanella
Jesse is an IT professional with years of experience working for universities, banks, and defense contractors. His interests include data science and information management. He earned a B.A. in Information Technology at Tennessee Technological University. Click here to visit his portfolio.
Contact him at jcampanella@tntech.edu.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our family and friends for their feedback and support. We would like to thank Dr. Connie Lester, Dr. Scot French, Dr. Barbara Gannon, Dr. Amy Foster, and Dr. Amelia Lyons of the University of Central Florida Department of History for the intellectual guidance and creative space they have provided.
This research formed part of an honors undergraduate thesis funded by the University of Central Florida Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) Individual Travel Grant. Their assistance greatly enabled us to conduct this work. The thesis, “Pestilence and Poverty: The Great Influenza Pandemic and Underdevelopment in the New South, 1918-1919,” can be accessed here.