Ellen Amster

Ellen Amster is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and in the Department of Religious Studies and is Jason A. Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine at McMaster University. Her publications include “The Body and the Body Politic: Medicine, Public Health, and Healing as History in the Modern Middle East and North Africa,” International Journal of Middle East Studies (47:3): 563-565 and her book, Medicine and the Saints: Science, Islam, and the Colonial Encounter in Morocco, 1877-1956 (Austin, Tx., 2014).

Epidemics

History’s crystal ball: What the past can tell us about COVID-19 and our future

Ellen Amster

(The Conversation) – During this pandemic, historians have been consulted like the Oracle of Delphi. Is COVID-19 like the Black Death? The 1918 flu? What lessons of history can be applied to today? But can history show us what we want to know? In some ways, yes. In others, no. And we need to broaden […]

African-Americans

We are George Floyd: How his Killing and COVID 19 made for an American Spring

Ellen Amster

Hamilton, Ont. (Special to Informed Comment) – George Floyd has ignited an “Arab Spring” in the United States. Like the now-fallen dictators of Egypt and Tunisia, the current American regime demonstrates that it does not serve the people. It consumes them. Trump’s America is a failed state. That’s why other countries rally in support; they […]