The REsponders: An Oral History of Covid-19 in St. Louis
In April of 2020, my classmate Simona Sarafinovska and I began collecting interviews for an oral history of the Covid-19 pandemic in St. Louis. We recorded conversations with over a dozen medical students, faculty, and administrators, including Hilary Babcock, the director of Barnes Jewish Hospital’s infection prevention and emergency preparedness program. Babcock and others described, in real time, the community’s response to the pandemic and their personal experiences during the unfolding crisis.
This project formed a core component of our successfully funded application for a $3 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Creativity in the Time of Covid-19: Art as a Tool for Combating Injustice and Inequality. A portion of this funding enabled us to conduct follow-up interviews in 2021 and 2022, as well as to hire a professional audio producer to edit our interview recordings into a documentary podcast, which will debut later this year.