'COVID Stories' will highlight local impacts of global pandemic
UIS & SIU School of Medicine partnering for multiple events
We all remember where we were when the world shut down in mid-March 2020.
An invisible, highly contagious virus had crossed borders and would stress the global health care system for the first time in a century. Uncertainty would become the new normal.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused roughly 350,000 deaths in the United States before the introduction of vaccines that December.
Five years later, a series of Springfield-area events will bring moments from the global pandemic back into sharp focus. ‘COVID Stories’ will provide both local and universal reflections on how we as a society adjusted when things went viral, literally.
The stories will be conveyed through voices from a digital archive of COVID-era experiences, an art exhibit, a theatrical reading/performance and a special lecture. The works are a collaboration between the University of Illinois Springfield and Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.
The projects have been years in the making. In 2022, SIU's Dr. Christine Todd and UIS's Dr. Livia Arndal Woods were awarded a Caryl Moy Collaborative Grant. It has since evolved into a dynamic multi-media medical humanities initiative.
“Scholars, doctors and students at SIU School of Medicine and the University of Illinois at Springfield have been working together to build a digital archive of COVID-era narratives with a focus on the experiences of people living in central Illinois,” said Woods, a UIS associate professor and coordinator of the projects. “The archive is a publicly accessible resource for anyone wanting to understand the human impacts of the pandemic in our region.”
A month of storytelling
5 -7 pm, September 26 – ‘COVID Stories’ Exhibit Opening & Reception
SIU School of Medicine, 801 N. Rutledge, 4th Fl - Medical Library
The exhibit features information from the COVID Stories digital archive, student art work inspired by the archive, UIS 2020 photo project, SIU School of Medicine’s Medical Humanities Story Box submissions and Pearson Exhibit.
7-8:30 pm, September 26 – ‘COVID Stories’ Staged Reading
SIU School of Medicine, 801 N. Rutledge, 2nd Fl - South Auditorium
SIU’s Hope Cherry and UIS Theatre’s Professor Missy Thibodeaux-Thompson have collaborated with university staff, faculty and students, as well as Springfield-area residents to present narratives collected from within our communities. At the conclusion, a talk-back forum will be mediated by trauma-informed specialists from UIS and SIU School of Medicine. Desserts will be served in the Pearson Museum after the program.
September 29 - October 23 – ‘COVID Stories’ Exhibit
SIU School of Medicine, 801 N Rutledge, 4th Fl - Medical Library
Open to the public 7:30 am – 5:30 pm, M-F
5:30 pm, October 9 – ‘COVID Stories’ Staged Reading
UIS Visual & Performing Arts (VPA) Building 170
5 pm, October 23 – 2025 Pearson Lecture: ‘COVID Stories’ by Livia Arndal Woods, PhD
SIU School of Medicine, 801 N. Rutledge, 2nd Fl - South Auditorium, followed by a reception in the Pearson Museum
Dr. Woods will discuss the creation of the COVID archive, its related projects and the teamwork that brought the stories into the community.
