Special Topics courses for MEDH credit!

In addition to the courses listed in the catalogue, you may take:
HIST 116.17, 20474 TR 12:15-1:30, Steere-Williams

Epidemics and Revolutions. The recent global epidemic crisis of Ebola provides a backdrop for the fascinating historical questions we will ask in this course, of how the social experience and cultural understanding of disease have shaped modern global history. We will explore how both chronic and infectious diseases have played a fundamental role in the development of modern modes of governance, public health, modern technologies, and a global economy. We will also examine how disease illuminates social attitudes about class, race, and colonialism in the period from the Enlightenment to the present. Using diverse examples such as cholera outbreaks in Europe, bubonic plague in India, syphilis in Africa, yellow fever in North America and the Caribbean, and HIV/AIDS across the globe, this course demonstrates that the historical analysis of disease is integral to understanding both “modernity” and “globalization”.