Global Histories of Epidemics

Catalog description

The COVID-19 pandemic has refocused attention on the ways in which infectious diseases spread across the world in the past and the ways that peoples, governments, and health systems reacted and responded to them. Through case studies focused on epidemic diseases such as plague, cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, influenza, polio, and AIDS, this course will investigate how varied knowledge, religious, and ethical systems shaped human responses to epidemics and in turn how epidemics reshaped societies at the local, national, and global level. Students will learn how epidemics influenced theories of disease transmission and led to varied public health strategies—from quarantines and sanitary cordons to mass vaccination campaigns—intended to mitigate their impacts. Spanning a broad chronology from the Middle Ages to the late twentieth century and covering geographical regions from south Asia and central Africa to Europe and North America, this course will center epidemics as sites of global contact and exchange and interrogate how race, ethnicity, class, and gender shaped scientific and popular understandings of disease and contributed to new forms of stigma. Special attention will be paid to the ways disease mitigation efforts reflected elite priorities, leaving marginalized groups to bear the brunt of epidemics. We will consider how prophylaxis strategies were historically developed through experiments on marginalized populations, as well as the ethics of unequal access to vaccines or other disease mitigation measures. Students will learn to evaluate historical arguments as well as interpret primary historical sources (books, memoirs, newspapers, government documents, photographs, maps, and films) and will conduct a final project focused on an epidemic disease. Each iteration of the course will use a minimum of four historical case studies, although the case studies may…