JOINED THE DEPARTMENT

2024

BIO

Cindy Ermus is the Charles and Linda Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine and the Director of the Humanities in Medicine program. She teaches courses in European and Atlantic history, the history of diseases and disasters, and the Age of Revolutions. Her specialization is in the history of medicine and the environment, especially epidemics and other crises, in eighteenth-century France and the Atlantic World. She has also published on digital history and the future of the historical profession. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Verge, Stat News, The Miami Herald, and El Nuevo Herald, and she has been a guest on BBC World News, Univision, Al-Jazeera, and others.

Her first monograph, The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Cambridge University Press, 2023), is a transnational study of the Plague of Provence of 1720 (or Great Plague of Marseille), one of the last outbreaks of plague in Western Europe. By tracing responses to the threat of infection throughout a network of major eighteenth-century port cities, she explores the ways in which the crisis influenced society, politics, and commerce beyond France in neighboring regions and in the Atlantic colonies. The completion of this project was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, McKnight, Ben Weider Fellowship, and the University of Lethbridge. In 2024, it was awarded the Urban History Association’s Lynn Hollen Lees Book Prize for best book in European urban history published in 2023.

Her second, shorter monograph—called an “Element”—is part of the Cambridge Elements series on Global Urban History. Urban Disasters (Cambridge UP, 2023) is a brief history of catastrophe that looks at case studies from around the globe over the last three-hundred years. It introduces the reader to central concepts that help define the study of disasters and examines the relationship between cities and catastrophes including earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, and epidemics. The book concludes with a brief look at the ongoing effects of climate change and the future of cities.

Ermus is also the editor of a volume on disaster and risk in the Gulf South that was published with LSU Press in 2018. In her research and in the classroom, she aims to tie her work to the present as much as possible to emphasize the relevance of historical study in the modern world. This edited volume, then, is a product of these efforts, and of her personal interest in the region in which she grew up.

Currently, she is at work on a global history of epidemics, co-authored with Claire Edington, that is under contract with the University of California Press, as well as a co-edited volume, with Bryan Banks, titled The Global Age of Revolutions: A History from 1650 to the Present (UVA Press, The Revolutionary Age series, 2026).

She has conducted archival research in cities across the Atlantic and parts of the Mediterranean, including Paris, Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, Madrid, Cádiz, Seville, London, Lisbon, Genoa, Rome, Venice, New Orleans, and Washington DC, and she has presented her research at annual meetings for the American Historical Association, the American Association for the History of Medicine, the Society for French Historical Studies, the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, and others. In 2023, she was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Beyond her research and the classroom, she is also co-series editor for France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization of the University of Nebraska Press (send her a pitch!), as well as co-founder and co-executive editor for the digital, open-access, peer-reviewed publication www.AgeofRevolutions.com, which explores themes and moments in the history of revolutions.

A first-generation Cuban-American, Cindy was raised in Miami, Florida where she discovered her passion for history and became interested in the history of disasters and crises. For more on this, see her AoR post, “The Cuban Revolution & Me.”

CV

TEACHING

HMED 397: Directed Experience in Health Care Humanities in Medicine

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books

Monographs

• The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Cambridge University Press, 2023. Awarded the Urban History Association's Lynn Hollen Lees Book Prize for best book in European urban history published in 2023.
• Urban Disasters. Cambridge Elements series in Global Urban History, Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Co-authored Books

• Epidemics: A Global History, co-authored with Claire Edington (UC San Diego). Under contract with University of California Press, 2025.

Edited Volumes

• Age of Revolutions: A Global History, 1650 to the Present, co-edited with Bryan Banks. UVA Press, 2026.
• Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South: Two Centuries of Catastrophe, Risk, and Resilience. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2018.

Editorships

• 2023 – present -- Editor, France Overseas Series of the University of Nebraska Press
• 2015 – present -- Co-Executive Editor, Age of Revolutions, ageofrevolutions.com

Journal Articles

• “Digital Humanities for the People(?): Past, Present, and Future,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 49, no. 3 (Winter 2023): 17-27.
• “Memory and the Representation of Public Health Crises: Remembering the Plague of Provence in the Tricentennial.” Environmental History 26, no. 4 (October 2021): 776-88.
• “The History of Science and the Science of History: Computational Methods, Algorithms, and the Future of the Field,” with Abraham H. Gibson. Isis 110, no. 3 (September 2019): 555-66.
• “The Spanish Plague That Never Was: Crisis and Exploitation in Cádiz During the Peste of Provence.” Special issue on Humans and the Environment in the Long Eighteenth Century, Eighteenth-Century Studies 49, no. 2 (January 2016): 167-93.
• “Reduced to Ashes: The Good Friday Fire of 1788 in Spanish Colonial New Orleans.” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association LIV, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 292-331.

Chapters in Edited Collections

• “Spanish Foundations of the French Quarter: Rebuilding Colonial New Orleans in the Wake of Disaster,” in Port Cities of the Atlantic World: Sea-Facing Histories of the US South, edited by Jacob Steere-Williams and Blake Scott. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2023.
• “Managing Disaster and Understanding Disease in the Early Eighteenth Century,” Pre-Modern Environment & Disease, edited by Lori Jones. London: Routledge, 2022.
• “Swamp Things: Invasive Species as Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South,” with Abraham H. Gibson. In Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South: Two Centuries of Catastrophe, Risk, and Resilience, edited by Cindy Ermus. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2018.

Selected Op-Ed Pieces and Scholarly Journalism

• “In our new age of disasters, centralized responses are needed,” The Washington Post (July 25, 2023).
• “When bubonic plague hit France in 1720, officials dithered. Sound familiar?” Stat News (May 25, 2020).
• The danger of prioritizing politics and economics during the coronavirus outbreak,” The Washington Post (March 13, 2020).
• “The Cuban Revolution and Me” (cover story), In Cuba Today (July 5, 2016). (Also on www.AgeofRevolutions.com).
• “What does it mean to be ‘a product of the Cuban Revolution?’” The Miami Herald (July 25, 2016). Published in Spanish: “¿Qué significa ser ‘un producto de la revolución cubana?’” El Nuevo Herald & En Cuba Hoy (July 25, 2016).

Digital Humanities

Digital Projects

• Age of Revolutions Journal. Co-founder, Co-Executive Editor, and contributor. 2015-present. www.ageofrevolutions.com
• Honest Abe’s Information Emporium. Contributor. 2023. www.honestabes.info
• Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité: Exploring the French Revolution. Associate Producer, 2019 update. revolution.chnm.org

SELECTED GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS

• 2024 -- Awarded the Urban History Association’s Lynn Hollen Lees Book Prize for best book in European urban history published in 2023
• 2022 – 2024 -- US Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language (UISFL) Award. Co-PI with Glenn Martinez (UTSA)
• 2024 -- Nominated for the University Excellence Award for Research Achievement, University of Texas at San Antonio
• 2023 -- Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
• 2023 -- 2022 Stumberg Researcher of the Year Award, University of Texas at San Antonio
• Jan. – Dec. 2022 -- National Endowment for the Humanities, Award for Faculty at Hispanic-Serving Institutions for research in the humanities
• 2021 – 2022 -- Nominated for the President's Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching Excellence, University of Texas at San Antonio
• 2014 – 2015 -- Nominated for the Faculty of the Year Award, Florida Southwestern State College
• 2013 – 2014 -- Nominated for the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, Florida State University
• 2012 – 2013 -- Awarded the Joe Richardson Award for Excellence in Teaching, Florida State University

INVITED TALKS

• “Digital Humanities, AI Literacy, and the Historical Profession.” Invited talk, University of Florida (January 24, 2024).
• “Crisis and Contagion: Researching Disease and Disaster in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World.” Invited speaker for the Open Digital Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies, or ODSECS (December 5, 2023).
• “The Great Plague Scare of 1720.” Invited book talk for the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies (IHB) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna (November 29, 2023).
• “On The Great Plague Scare of 1720.” Invited speaker for panel on “Epidemics and Public Health in Port Cities” (with David Barnes and Andrew Wehrman) for Villanova University Lepage Center’s webinar series on Cities in Historical Perspectives (November 16, 2023).
• “Why the Medical Humanities?” For Film and Medicine event, UTSA (September 14, 2023).
• “The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Reflections in the COVID Era.” Invited book talk and panel (with Christine Adams, Sarah Black, Jessie Hewitt, Junko Takeda) hosted by H-France Salon (June 9, 2023).
• “Digital Humanities for the People(?): Past, Present, and Future.” Invited speaker for roundtable “Digital Humanities: A Decade of Experience” (with Jeffrey Ravel, David Wrisley, and Christy Pichichero) for the Society for French Historical Studies conference titled “Digital Humanities: Ways Forward, A Conference in Honor of David Kammerling Smith” (March 20, 2021).
• “History in Times of Crisis: Lessons from the Plague of Provence.” Invited speaker for the Phi Alpha Theta Induction Ceremony at Belmont Abbey College (March 5, 2021).
• “Plague, COVID, and Empire: 1720 & 2020,” Texas State University (November 12, 2020).
• “Health, Culture, and Society.” Invited speaker and workshop leader, Bowdoin College (October 26, 2020).
• “Cities and Urban Development in Times of Plague,” for The History of Now: Plagues and Pandemics, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (October 2, 2020).
• “History in the Time of COVID: Reflections on the 1720 Plague of Provence.” Invited speaker and workshop leader for the Preyer Lecture Series at Queens University of Charlotte on “History for Our Time” (September 7, 2020).
• “COVID-19: Past, Present, and Future,” for Urgent Matters: Times of Pandemics, co-hosted by Latin America and Latino Studies (LALS) and the Lewis Global Center at Smith College, with Karina Ramacciotti, Javier Puente, and Claudia Cisneros (April 23, 2020).
• “On Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South: Two Centuries of Catastrophe, Risk, and Resilience.” Author book talk at Louisiana Book Festival (November 10, 2018).
• “Disruptions in Time: Historical Reflections on Disaster, Revolution, and the Digital Humanities.” Invited talk for Atlantic Colloquium, Florida International University (October 25, 2018).
• “The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Society in the Eighteenth-Century World.” Center for Biology and Society, Arizona State University (August 28, 2018).
• “Understanding Disaster and the Environment in the Long Eighteenth Century.” Symposium on Disasters and Catastrophes in the Enlightenment, Mount Royal University (March 9, 2018).
• “The Spectre of Death: An Early Modern Epidemic in Transnational Context,” for forum, Early Modern Plagues: Histories of Resilience, with Jacqueline Wernimont and Monica Green, Arizona State University (April 11, 2017).
• “Plague and Crisis in the Eighteenth Century.” Arizona State University’s Institute for Humanities Research (April 10, 2017).
• Plenary: “Communicating Disease: Information Networks During the Plague of Provence,” The Enlightenment in Motion Symposium, Mount Royal University (March 17, 2017).
• “Plague Cultures: Managing the 1720 Plague of Provence in France.” Department of Modern Languages, University of Lethbridge (October 3, 2016).

EXPERTISE

• 18th-century France and Atlantic World
• History of Medicine
• History of Disasters
• Age of Revolutions