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Organization, Regulations, and Courses 2023-24


HIST 8.09 Plague and Plagues in History

As we know from recent years, plague shapes human experience and thus reshapes history. Even before the advent of COVID-19, infectious disease was the number one cause of death in the world. In the last several years, we have all experienced just how epidemics and pandemics are a force in society, religion, politics, the economy, and culture. This course takes as its premise that epidemics and plagues are one of the central forces of human history. With a focus on the Western narrative, but with gestures to global contexts and comparisons, this course will examine the role of plague in shaping cultural, intellectual, religious, political, and public-health history, from biblical times to the present. The outbreak of bubonic plague (“the Black Death”) in the fourteenth century will provide a central anchor to the issues, with comparisons to the Justinianic plague (6th century), tuberculosis, yellow fever, the Spanish-flu, HIV-AIDS (etc.), and of course, COVID-19. In this course, we will read accounts of history (Thucydides on plague in 5th century BC Athens; Daniel Defoe on 1655), accounts of literature (Boccaccio, Decameron, Susan Sontag on the language of AIDS), and modern scholarship written in the wake of our own plague experience as part of our effort to understand the human reaction and interpretation to plague.

Degree Requirement Attributes

Dist:INT or SOC

The Timetable of Class Meetings contains the most up-to-date information about a course. It includes not only the meeting time and instructor, but also its official distributive and/or world culture designation. This information supersedes any information you may see elsewhere, to include what may appear in this ORC/Catalog or on a department/program website. Note that course attributes may change term to term therefore those in effect are those (only) during the term in which you enroll in the course.

Department-Specific Course Categories

Class of 2023 and Before Major Dist: INTER, pre-1700/pre-1800; Class of 2024 and Beyond Major Dist: premodern.