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Course Overview
Although historians have often been slow to recognize it, the forces of disease have profoundly shaped the development of human societies. This course seeks to place disease within a larger cultural and historical framework. We explore how pathogens have affected the processes of civilization, war, conquest, and globalization, and the ways in which diseases in turn have been altered by contact and patterns of interaction among human beings, as well as with other organisms. At the dawn of the 21st century, our species faces the challenge of emerging "new" diseases as well as the resurgence of old ones. Global networks of travel, trade and communication promote the exchange of information and medical technology; they also facilitate the movement of the pathogens that accompany us as we board planes and load container ships. Disease is a universal phenomenon. However, neither disease nor medical treatment is equally distributed among the world's populations. The course thus also examines disease as a biological expression of social and economic pathologies.
Course Syllabus Spring 2007 |
