HIST 234: Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 (Spring, 2010)

Syllabus

Professor:

Frank Snowden, Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of History, Yale University

Description:

This course consists of an international analysis of the impact of epidemic diseases on western society and culture from the bubonic plague to HIV/AIDS and the recent experience of SARS and swine flu. Leading themes include: infectious disease and its impact on society; the development of public health measures; the role of medical ethics; the genre of plague literature; the social reactions of mass hysteria and violence; the rise of the germ theory of disease; the development of tropical medicine; a comparison of the social, cultural, and historical impact of major infectious diseases; and the issue of emerging and re-emerging diseases.

Texts:

Brandt, Allan. No Magic Bullet. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Barnes, David. The Making of a Social Disease: Tuberculosis in Nineteenth-Century France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Chase, Marilyn. The Barbary Plague. New York: Random House, 2004.

Defoe, Daniel. Journal of the Plague Year. New York: Penguin, 2003.

Fenn, Elizabeth. Pox Americana. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.

Snow, John. Snow on Cholera, New York: The Commonwealth Fund: Oxford University Press, 1936.

Snowden, Frank. The Conquest of Malaria. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.

Snowden, Frank. "Emerging and Re-emerging Diseases: A Historical Perspective"Immunological Reviews. Vol. 225, Issue 1, pages 9-26, October 2008.

Snowden, Frank. Naples in the Time of Cholera. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Verghese, Abraham. My Own Country. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.

Films:

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt. Dir. Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. New Yorker Films, 1989.

The Horseman on the Roof (Le Hussard sur le Toit). Dir. Jean-Paul Rappeneau. Based on French novel by Jean Giono. Miramax Films, 1995.

The Seventh Seal. Dir. Ingmar Bergman. Based on play Wood Painting by Ingmar Bergman. AB Svensk Filmindustri, 1957.

The Story of Louis Pasteur. Dir. William Dieterle. Warner Bros., 1936.

Requirements:

Midterm and final examinations, a course paper of six to eight pages, and weekly reading responses.

Grading:

Midterm exam: 20%
Final exam: 40%
Course paper paper: 20%
Reading responses and class participation: 20%