Western Scholars Talk

The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 with Elizabeth Fenn 

From 1775 to 1782, while the Revolutionary War unfolded along the Atlantic seaboard, a terrible smallpox epidemic swept all of North America. Professor Fenn shows how this episode of contagion sheds new light on the period of the American Revolution. She addresses not just such topics as biological warfare but also regions of the continent that historians often ignore, including the Jackson Hole area.

Thursday, July 30, 6-7p | Doors open 5:30p | Free

Elizabeth Fenn recently retired from the University of Colorado Boulder, where she was a distinguished professor in the Department of History. Her book Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 is the basis of her lecture at the Jackson Hole History Museum. Pox Americana was awarded three prizes, including the 2002 James J. Broussard First Book Prize, the 2003 Longman-History Today Book of the Year award, and the 2004 Society of the Cincinnati Book Prize.

Fenn is also the author of Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People, which won the Pulitzer Prize and conveys early American history from the perspective of Indigenous peoples at the center of the continent.

Many thanks to the Jackson Hole News&Guide, The Hole History Society, Massinter Family, Teton County Semiquincentennial Committee, Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund, and Wyoming Humanities for supporting the Western Scholars Speaker series.