Research Resources:

Pandemic Studies Webpage 

PubMed Search results

SCHEDULE Weeks Week 1. Sept 1. Pandemic World History and the Present

Viewing in lieu of class: 

Visualizing the History of Pandemics

“Global Pandemic in National Territory,” David Ludden, online Video (37:14)

“A Brief History of the Plague of Justinian.” Dr. Robert McEachnie. Youtube (22:20)

Week 2. Sept 6-8. Ancient Mobility, Plagues, and Pathocoenosis 

Viewing in lieu of class on Tuesday 6 Sept:

The Antonine Plague. The Historian’s Craft, YouTube (11:33)

Roman-Chinese Relations in Classical Antiquity. The Historians Craft, YouTube (8:56)

The Plague of Cyprian. The Historians Craft, YouTube (15:34)

Reading for Week 2:

Raoul McLaughlin, Rome and the Distant East: Trade Routes to the Ancient Lands of Arabia, India and China, pp. 83-111. [28 pp]

John Aberth, Plagues in World History,  pp.19-33, 73-78. [45 pages to here]

Lester K. Little, “Life and Afterlife of the First Plague Pandemic.” In Little, Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 3–32. (PDF online) [74 pages to here]

Jean-Paul Gonzalez, et al “Pathocoenosis: A Holistic Approach to Disease Ecology,” by EcoHealth, 7, 237-240, 2010. (PDF online) [77 pages to here]

Danielle Gourevitch,”The Galenic Plague: a Breakdown of the Imperial Pathocoenosis: Pathocoenosis and Longue Durée,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2005, 27, 1, 57-69. (PDF online) [89 pages to here]

Additional Recommended Reading: Kyle Harper, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, Princeton University Press, 2017.

Writing:

1-page response paper #1 due at midnight Wednesday Sept 7. Prompt: describe the routes traveled by plagues in ancient Rome and briefly considering their impact (remember Galen and Cyprian). Put that 1-page response paper #1 into your student folder by midnight on Wednesday September 7.

In addition, please insert a short text describing yourself into the google doc listing all the students in the class. HERE is the link.   

Week 3. Sept 13-15. Steppes, Tropics, Sails, Rodents, Fleas, 600-1350 Reading:

Lynda Shaffer, “Southernization.” Journal of World History, 5, 1, 1994, 1–21. 

Michal Biran, “The Mongol Empire and inter-civilizational exchange” (PDF), Chapter 20 in The Cambridge World History, 2015, pp.534-558 (Cambridge Core Link). 

John Aberth, Plagues in World History, pp.34-72. 

Luisa M.A. Cambra, “The causes of the Black Death described by Ibn Khātima in the work Taḥṣīl al- garaḍ,” Annals of review and Research 4, 1, 2018, (PDF online)

Ewen Callaway, “Ancient DNA traces origin of Black Death,” Nature, 2022. (PDF online)

Highly recommended: William McNeill,  Plagues and Peoples. Chap3. (PDF online)

Writing:

1-page response paper #2 due at midnight Wednesday Sept 14. Describe the historical processes that altered the space of disease mobility in the centuries BEFORE and DURING the expansion of the Mongol Empire. 

4. Sept 20-22. Plague, Territory, Adaptation

Reading: 

Dols MW. The second plague pandemic and its recurrences in the Middle East: 1347-1894. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 22, 2, 1979: 162-89. (PDF online). 

BBC Website: Dubrovnik: The medieval city designed around quarantine. 

William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples. Random House, 1998, 161-207 (PDF online)

Sheldon Watts, “The Human Responses to Plague in Western Europe and the Middle East, 1347-1844,” in Sheldon Watts, Epidemics and History, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997, pp.1-39. (PDF online)

Ref:   J.N.Hays, The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009. 

Meagan Selby Allen, “Individual and Communal Medicine During the Black Death of 1347-1351” (Student paper PDF online, 165pp)

Richard John Palmer, “Control of Plague in Venice and Northern Italy, 1348-1600,” PhD Thesis, University of Kent, 1978.  (PDF online, 409 pp)

Vesna Zlata Blažina-Tomić, Expelling the plague: the Health Office and the implementation of quarantine in Dubrovnik, 1377-1533.  Montreal : McGill-Queen’s University Press 2015.  Chapter 5, “Control of Arrivals in Dubrovnik, 1500-1530.”

Writing: 1-page response paper #3 due at midnight Wednesday Sept 21. This week, we focus on the bubonic plague around the medieval Mediterranean. Focus on its timing, routes of travel, and diversity of impact, and on factors that made places and groups of people different from one another.   

5. Sept 27-29. Conquest and Contagion, 1300-1900

Reading: James L. A. Webb, “Globalization of disease, 1300 to 1900,” in The Cambridge World History, pp 54-75. Harper, Kyle. Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021, pp. 243-284 (PDF online)  Sheldon Watts, “Smallpox in the New World and in the Old: From Holocaust to Eradication, 1518-1977,” in Epidemics and History, pp.84-121 (PDF online). 

6. Oct 4-6. Cholera: The First Global Empire Pandemic

Reading: John Aberth, Plagues in World History,  pp.101-111.  Sheldon Watts, “Cholera and Civilization: Great Britain and India, 1817-1920, in Watts, Epidemics and History, 167-212. (PDF online) J.N.Hays, The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History, Chapter 7, “Cholera and Sanitation,” pp.135-154 (PDF online) Sagaree Jain, “Anti-Asian Racism in the 1817 Cholera Pandemic.” April 2020, (9pp) Writing: 5-page paper #1 due by Midnight Friday Oct 7.  A two-part prompt: Describe changes in pandemic space from ancient to medieval times, and then from medieval to modern times.

7. Oct 11-13. Plague and Empire in China

Reading: Carol Benedict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China, Stanford, 1996, pp.1-72, 150-171. Writing: 1-page response paper #4 due at midnight Wednesday Oct 12.  

8. Oct 18-20. Cholera and Empire in Africa

Reading: Myron Echenberg, Africa in the Time of Cholera: A History of Pandemics from 1817 to the Present, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp.1-86, 174-183.  Writing: 1-page response paper #5 due at midnight Wednesday Oct 19.

9. Oct 25-27. 

Hays and Hays. The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History. Chapter 9, “Disease, Medicine, and Western Imperialism,” pp.179-213 (PDF online) and Chapter 12, “Disease and Power,” pp. 283-314. (PDF online) Sandhya Polu, Infectious Disease in India, 1892-1940: Policy-Making and the Perception of Risk, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, Chapter 5. “Disease as Prism,” pp.140-157. Anjuli Fatima. Raza Kolb, Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror, 1817–2020. University of Chicago Press, 2021, “The Blue Plague,” pp.55-82.   1-page response paper #6 due at midnight Wednesday Oct 12.  

10. Pliley, J., Kramm, R., & Fischer-Tiné, H. (Eds.). (2016). Global Anti-Vice Activism, 1890–1950: Fighting Drinks, Drugs, and ‘Immorality’. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781316212592Nov 1-3.Add:
    

    Biodiversity and Disease Transmission

    The Connections Between Ecology and Infectious Disease, 2018, Volume 5

    ISBN : 978-3-319-92371-0

    Serge Morand
    Read Online
11. Nov 8-10. 5-page paper due by Midnight Friday Nov 11.
12. Nov 15-17

No Class Nov 22. Happy Thanksgiving Break

13. Nov 29 -Dec 1. Proposals for final paper in class this week.
14. Dec 6-8. Drafts of final paper will be considered if delivered by email by 9AM Fri Dec 9.
15. Dec 13. 5-page paper due by Midnight Friday Dec 16.

last day of classes Wed Dec 14.   YOUTUBE   The Asian Monsoon – The World’s Largest Weather System, GeoDiode (16:56).  

Storming the palace in Colombo

From Sharika Thiranagama:

a quick primer podcast for the Center for South Asia at Stanford: https://southasia.stanford.edu/news/whats-going-sri-lanka-sharika-thiranagama. Here is an online debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IQ6XCEXglY. A recent statement that was issued:https://www.ft.lk/columns/The-democratic-moment-today-a-call-for-action-and-reflection/4-733366

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