Description and Learning Goals
Disease has never been merely a biological phenomenon. Instead, all diseases—including COVID-19—are also social phenomena: in their origins, in their definition, in their spread, in their impacts, and in the responses they engender among different groups of people. The way we understand disease is shaped by culture, and, at the same time, epidemic disease often reshapes the society around it. This course aims to analyze the many ways that disease, medical theory, public health practice, and policy have shaped the American experience, with an emphasis on the late nineteenth through the early twenty-first centuries. We will consider how disease has been understood at different times; how disease has been employed as a metaphor in political rhetoric; how ideas about immunity and susceptibility have produced understandings of race, citizenship, and national belonging; how epidemic events have mobilized initiatives in public health and health activism; and how tropes of communicable disease have manifested in American popular culture. At the end of the quarter, we will consider how history helps us to understand some of the many issues surrounding COVID-19.
Learning goals for this course include (1) to develop a basic knowledge of the history of disease and public health in American history; (2) to understand how and why disease has been understood in certain ways at certain moments, and to recognize what the impacts of those understandings have been; (3) to refine discussion skills in a seminar/zoom setting; (4) to gain experience with the analysis of both primary and secondary historical sources; and (5) to learn how to prepare a historical research proposal.
You can find a complete syllabus for the course (pdf) here.