Jacob Steere-Williams is a historian of epidemic disease, particularly in nineteenth and early-twentieth century Britain and the former British colonies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and began teaching at the College of Charleston, where he is an Associate Professor, in 2011. Dr. Steere-Williams is a faculty affiliate with a number of campus programs, including the British Studies minor, the Medical Humanities minor, the Geography minor, the Carolina Lowcountry & Atlantic World Program (CLAW), and the Urban Studies Program. He also works closely with the Waring Historical Library on the campus MUSC, where he currently serves as the Vice-President of the Waring Historical Society.Professor Steere-Williams is the author of the 2020 book The Filth Disease: Typhoid Fever and the Practices of Epidemiology in Victorian England, published by the University of Rochester Press in the Studies in Medical History series. The Filth Disease is the first book to examine one of the most feared and important epidemic diseases of the nineteenth century, typhoid fever. The book argues that typhoid, a food-and-water borne infectious disease, was a model disease for the emerging field of epidemiology. The Filth Disease explores the everyday practices of epidemiologists in Britain and across the British colonies. It follows how on-the-ground investigations of faulty sewers, leaky house drains, contaminated milk, and polluted waterways forged broader ideas of how to study epidemics and how to make public health change.His new book project, Carbolic Colonialism, examines the growth and use of disinfectants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, particularly in colonial India and South Africa during the Third Plague Pandemic.In addition to a number of scholarly articles and book chapters, Dr. Steere-Williams has actively contributed public-facing essays and op-eds, including in CNN and The Post and Courier. His current public history projects include the Waring Library’s COVID-19 oral history project, “Documenting Life During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” and the NYU COVID-19 History Working Group.He has been a consultant on a number of important digitization projects, including a collaboration between the Royal College of Physicians of London and Wiley publishing, to create a digital archive. Of the RCP.Dr. Steere-Williams also serves as the Associate Editor of The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, one of the top journals in the field. For years he served as the Book Reviews Editor. He is an active member of the American Association for the History of Medicine, and has served on a number of committees, including the Rosen Prize committee for the best book in the history of public health.Professor Steere-Williams teaches a number of classes that focus on the history of disease and public health (including History 116: Epidemics and Revolutions; History 291: Disease, Medicine, and History), and on modern British history (History 357: Victorian Britain).He also serves as the Director of Graduate Studies for the MA Program in History.Read more about this authorRead less about this author