American Epidemics

Catalog description

From colonial ailments to global pandemics, disease has shaped the United States. This seminar places the coronavirus outbreak of 2019-2020 in historical perspective, examining the wide-ranging effects of contagious disease in American life, literature, and culture. Together we seek to understand epidemics as both biological forces and social events. Beginning with the metaphor of “invisible bullets” that the Algonquin peoples of the Chesapeake Bay used to describe colonial settler diseases, the course traces the history of the nation through epidemics, addressing the social and political impact of a different disease each week. We read historical accounts, critical texts, and literary works; listen to podcasts; watch films; view works of art; and explore online archives. Students learn to approach disease as an object of humanistic inquiry, and examine intersectional questions of race, gender, colonial power, economic privilege, and national belonging through medical history. We find strategies for critiquing and comprehending the inequities and anxieties of the present through moments of biological crisis in America.