Pandemics and Epidemics in African History

Catalog description

This course explores the histories of epidemics and pandemics over the entire sweep of African history using a continent-wide perspective from the earliest recorded pestilence to the rise and expansion of successive Ebola epidemics. The course offers students the opportunity to understand how human interaction with the African environment - one of the major themes in African history - affected pandemics unfolding and how pandemics shaped African demography and settlement patterns, economies, societies, cultures and politics.