Health Humanities Syllabus Repository

Going Viral: Epidemics in American History, Literature, and Culture

Epidemics are not only biological events, but cultural phenomena that produce wide-ranging effects on populations and nations. This course explores how American history, literature, and culture have been shaped by epidemics, from small pox outbreaks in the American colonies to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Through a study of historical scholarship, literary texts, and cultural artifacts, we will consider issues such as how epidemiological theory has informed federal policy; 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. Entering U.S. history at crucial moments of biological crisis, this course aims to analyze the many ways medical theory, practice, and policy have inflected—or infected—the American experience.

Undergraduate (BA, BS)

Emily Waples

Epidemics/Pandemics

English

History

Sociology

Hiram, Ohio

face-to-face

Hiram College

Going Viral: Epidemics in American History, Literature, and Culture