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