How do epidemics shape the way we live? A History of the World in Six Plagues studies how pandemic disease permanently shaped and changed humankind. My argument is that these six fronts—Cholera, Sleeping Sickness, the quote-unquote Spanish Flu, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and COVID-19 marked disturbing moments when global governments allowed human rights to recede in service to capital. At the same time, people were left to suffer the consequences of pandemic disease.

Join us at Making Worlds for a riveting discussion between author Edna Bonhomme and critic Kristen Martin about how capital shapes epidemics and pandemics past and present.

Edna Bonhomme is a historian of science and culture writer based in Berlin. She is a contributing writer for Frieze Magazine, and her work has been published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The London Review of Books, and The Nation, among others. She is co-editor of After Sex, a collection of essays, poems, and short stories illuminating why people need free and universal access to abortion (Silver Press, 2023). Moreover, she’s the author of A History of the World in Six Plagues, a nonfiction book that explores the relationship between captivity and contagion (Simon and Schuster, 2025).

Kristen Martin is a writer and critic based in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The New Republic, NPR, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood is her first book.