Thursday, July 30, 6-7 p.m. | Doors open 5:30 p.m. | Free on Outside Deck
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.
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.
