IWC SPEAKER SERIES:
“Cultural impact of pandemics in history”
Bligh Conway, History Teacher at Brookes International School of St. Petersburg
The IWC is proud to present our very first online Speaker Series Event. Bligh Conway will join us to discuss the topic “Cultural impact of pandemics in history”. See all the details below and signup now for this very special exclusive ONLINE EVENT.
What history can tell us about COVID-19 and our modern world:
As we endure the impact of the Novel Coronavirus on our daily lives, one may be hit with the shock of how apparently fragile our amazingly interconnected world suddenly seems to be. Hopping on a plane and flying between countries or continents, once a staple of international life is, suddenly and shockingly, an impossibility. Such a moment on such a scale seems absolutely alien to our modern world sensibilities. ”Designed in California, assembled in China” isn't just a slogan, it's a mantra concerning our absolute reliance on interconnectivity to maintain our world and lives. It is exactly this that Coronavirus has put on hold. In the midst of the viral assault on our interconnected world, we would be right to question what long term impacts this might have and what paradigm shifts might occur as a result of this global pandemic.
In the past, disease has brought about massive cultural and political change. In the Americas multiple pandemics annihilated the great majority of native civilizations and cultures. In ancient Athens a brutal epidemic heralded the end of classical democracy culminating perhaps with the execution of Socrates for his refusal to not exercise his freedom of speech. In Medieval Europe, humanism and a fascination with technology followed the Black Death, setting the scene for European Global Dominance in the centuries that followed. In our own lifetime, the AIDS Pandemic has both exacerbated homophobia, and helped pave the way for the LGBTQ inclusion of today. This talk is an opportunity to look at how disease changed the world before, and surmise how it will do so again.
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Originally from the USA, Bligh Conway has worked as an international educator for twenty years. He has taught both European and World History at the Advanced Placement level for more than a decade, and spent most of that time helping to build the highly successful academic program at the Anglo-American School of St. Petersburg, that successfully placed students in their top choices of universities in the USA, UK, South Korea, and all across Europe.
He earned his Bachelor’s Degree in History with a specialization in Ancient and Medieval European History from Indiana University in Bloomington in 1994. In 1995, hoping that the fall of the USSR would lead to easier archival access, he studied Russian language at St. Petersburg State University, and from 1996-1997 conducted interviews with WWII survivors in the Leningrad region as part of his Master’s Thesis. In 1997 he earned his Master’s Degree in Russian Military History when he defended his thesis on Soviet Partisan Warfare in the Second World War, and it's a role in Soviet Wartime Propaganda.
From 1998 he has worked as an international educator in St. Petersburg, Russia. He is married with a son, and currently teaches history at the Brookes International School of St. Petersburg.
