“Afterlives of Pandemics, Past & Present” is an initiative of Beyond Better, an interdisciplinary, multi-media public medical humanities effort that seeks to destabilize ableist narratives in American healthcare through oral history, storytelling, and art. The project asks, what can we learn about health, illness, disability, and society by looking at the current experiences of COVID-19 survivors alongside the past experiences of polio survivors from the mid-twentieth century? Using oral history and digital archival research, and in conjunction with the artistic vision of two solicited artists with disabilities, the project will collect and curate stories of survival from the current COVID-19 pandemic and juxtapose them with stories of survival from the mid-twentieth century polio epidemic in the U.S. 

”Afterlives of Pandemics” will place stories of contemporary experiences into historical perspective and put them on our digital platforms at beyondbetter.org, and on our Instagram page (@thebeyondbetterproject). Original visual art works created by illustrators and animators from the disability community will help explore the experiences of interview participants. 

Using the analytical lens of disability history as a way to move beyond the dichotomy of sick/well, the project will curate a series of individual stories and artistic interpretations that capture the historical continuities and departures that characterize the experience of epidemic disease in the minutes, days, weeks, months, and years after they touch people’s lives. It draws attention to the ways in which the afterlife of an epidemic disease continues to shape life in both intimate and very public ways, from the level of the individual, to the community, to society at large.