Pandemic World History

Fall 2022. HIST-UA 79

Tu Th 9:30-10:45

Academic Resource Center (ARC), 18 Washington Place, Rm LL03

David Ludden (homepage)

KJCC 53 Washington Square South, Rm 526

Office Hours: Wed 12-2 and by appt (del5@nyu.edu)

Pandemics travel near and far from ancient times, covering more distance, traveling more routes, and infecting more people, over centuries; provoking political, social, and cultural change and diverse intellectual activity. Our two concerns in this course are why and how pandemics travel as they do, and why their mobility has the impact it does in particular places at specific times.  Our work in the course contributes to the development of our pandemic studies webpage, which combines epidemiology with spatial, social, political, cultural, and economic history. We focus particularly on the role of empires, trade, globalization, and capitalism in organizing pandemic mobility and impact.  

Reading: All required reading is online. Weekly readings average around 100 pages per week and must be done before class on Tuesday. 

Writing Assignments: Students put all writing into their individual Google Drive folder, in DOC files (to enable me to add comments and write evaluations at the end). All writing assignments are to be in 12pt type, double spaced, with one inch margins, with student name and assignment number, as listed in the syllabus, in the header. Here is the link to the folder containing all the individual student folders. Here is the link to the student folders in my GoogleDrive.

1. Five 1-page response papers. Students write five one-page response papers, based on readings, presentations, and a prompt presented in class. These papers are due by midnight on Wednesdays, to serve as the basis for class discussion on Thursday. They should reflect an understanding of main points in readings and presentations and provide ideas – including questions and doubts — for discussion. Each is worth five points. 
2. Three 5-page synthetic papers. Students write three five-page essays, based on all cumulative course material and approved outside sources, responding to prompts from the instructor, discussed in class. These papers should represent a student’s synthesis of course material in response to the problem posed by the prompt. Each is worth 20 points. 

CITATIONS: The Chicago Manual provides the format standard for footnotes and bibliographic citations. Neither footnotes nor citations are required for any reading that is on the syllabus, but both are required for any sources that are not on the syllabus. Using outside sources is NOT RECOMMENDED for assignments in the first part of the course, but is fine thereafter, for parts two and three.

Grading: There are no exams. Grading is on a point system. One-page papers earn 5 points each (6 x 5 = 30); five-page papers earn 20 points (3 x 20 = 60). Attendance and participation earn 10 points. (Total: 30+60+10 = 100). 

Final grade point equivalents: A = 91-100; A- = 85-90; B+ = 81-84; B = 77-80; B- = 74-76; C+ = 70-73; C = 65-69; C- = 60-64; D=50-59; F=<50.

INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES Students who successfully complete this course will be able to 

• describe orally and in writing worlds of pandemic mobility at various times;
• effectively use concepts and methodologies for relevant studies of globalization; 
• critically interpret maps and other visual representations of historical information; 
• think critically about territorial boundaries as features of pandemic histories; 
• understand how different world regions participate in pandemic histories.

TEACHING AND LEARNING METHODOLOGIES

• This course combines lecture presentations, course discussions, and independent student work. Each class includes a presentation with Q&A and class discussion. Presentations will not focus only on the reading but will add significant information, including online materials. Students will lead class discussion. 
• Writing assignments enable students to develop their understanding of the reading and class material. Oral presentations enable students to formulate ideas for group discussion and to seek assistance from classmates in resolving challenges they face in their own research and writing. 

ASSESSMENT GUIDELINES

• All page limits are loose – a little more is fine. All papers are double spaced, 12-point font, with one-inch margins, with student name and assignment number in chronological order, as listed in the syllabus, in the header. 

• • 3 five-page synthetic papers: Due in each student’s Google Folder by midnight on the day of assignment, they are on topics in readings and discussed in class. Papers will be judged on all aspects of quality: organized prose in a coherent sequence of paragraphs should focus clearly on the assignment and display a strong understanding of ideas and information from relevant course material, using factual details from readings and class presentations to verify statements in response to the prompt.
  • 5 one-page analytical response papers: Due in each students Google Folder at midnight on Wednesday due dates in the syllabus. Addressing the prompt DOES NOT MEAN discussing all the readings individually. It means using reading, discussions, and class presentations to problem in the prompt. NO CITATIONS. Do not use quotations: USE YOUR OWN WORDS. Responses should organize a coherent sequence of paragraphs to focus clearly on themes in the prompt and use factual details from readings and class presentations to verify statements in response to the prompt. Prose in response papers CAN BE USED in 5-page papers; response papers are meant to be preparation for the longer papers.  

• Classroom participation. This grade is based on levels of personal participation in the course as a whole. 

• Minimally, students should always show they are paying attention and never get distracted by computers, phones, doodling, daydreams, or chit chat. They should ask questions in class. They should participate in discussions. 

• They should respond intelligently when the instructor asks, “What do you think about this?” Students will also make presentations to generate discussion; these presentations count for one-third of participation grade. 

• Concerns about class participation. Students who are concerned for any reason about their ability to participate in the classroom discussion should contact the professor as early as possible to work out a solution.   

NYU MOSES CENTER FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

• New York University is committed to providing equal educational opportunity and participation for students with disabilities. CSD works with NYU students to determine appropriate and reasonable accommodations that support equal access to a world-class education. Confidentiality is of the utmost importance. Disability-related information is never disclosed without student permission. https://www.nyu.edu/students/communities-and-groups/students-with-disabilities.html. Contact: mosescsd@nyu.edu

RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS

• Students need to make sure they are familiar with the provisions and obligations of The University Calendar Policy on Religious Holidays, which states, in part: “Students who anticipate being absent because of any religious observance should, whenever possible, notify faculty in advance of such anticipated absence.”

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY (adapted from the website of the College of Arts & Science, https://cas.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/cas/academic-integrity.html)

• Academic integrity means that the work you submit is original. Obviously, bringing answers into an examination or copying all or part of a paper straight from a book, the Internet, or a fellow student is a violation of this principle. But there are other forms of cheating or plagiarizing which are just as serious — for example, presenting an oral report drawn without attribution from other sources (oral or written); writing a sentence or paragraph which, despite being in different words, expresses someone else’s idea(s) without a reference to the source of the idea(s); or submitting essentially the same paper in two different courses (unless both instructors have given their permission in advance). Receiving or giving help on a take-home paper, examination, or quiz is also cheating, unless expressly permitted by the instructor (as in collaborative projects).

Research Resources:

Pandemic Studies Webpage 

PubMed Search

MAPS

SCHEDULE

PART ONE:

A Very Long-Term Perspective,

from Ancient to Modern Times

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

Viewing in lieu of class: 

Visualizing the History of Pandemics

“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)

PPT: “The Mobile Space of Ancient Plagues.”

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 H. McNeill,  Plagues and Peoples, New York, Doubleday Anchor, 1976. Chap3. (PDF online) Monica H. Green, “Climate and Disease in Medieval Eurasia,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History 

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.”

Ian Mortimer, The Dying and the Doctors : The Medical Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England, Royal Historical Society, 2009. 

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.

Thursday class PowerPoint on The Black Plague.  

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.

Kyle Harper, 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). 

In class PPT: Pandemics in the Age of Sail: Spaces of Modernity.

REF: A medical History of the Plague: Kathryn A. Glatter and Paul Finkelman, “History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19,” Am J Med. 2021 Feb, 134(2): 176–181.

PubMed Search results for “plague”

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

Reading:

John Aberth, Plagues in World History,  pp.101-111. 

Cholera in History.com

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)

David Arnold, “Cholera and Colonialism in British India.” Past & Present, no. 113, 1986, pp. 118–51.

REF (medical): S. L. Kotar and J. E. Gessler, Cholera: a worldwide history, Jefferson NC, McFarland & Company, Inc., 2014.

Dr. John Bell (1796-1872), All the material facts in the history of epidemic cholera: being a report of the College of physicians of Philadelphia, to the Board of health: and a full account of the causes, post mortem appearances, and treatment of the disease. Philadelphia: Desilver, 1832.

Writing: 5-page paper #1 due by Midnight Sunday Oct 9.  A two-part prompt: Describe changes in the space of pandemic travels from Ancient Rome to the Black Death, and then, from The Black Death to Pandemic Cholera. (MAPS provide a visual guide to spatial chronology.)

PART TWO:

Pandemic Modernity in the Age of Empire: circa 1800-1920

7. Oct 11-13. Plague in China

Reading:

 Carol Benedict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China, Stanford, 1996, pp.1-72, 150-171.

The last great plague pandemic.

Reference:

G.D.Sussman, “Was the Black Death in India and China?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Fall 2011, 85, 3, 2011, 319-355 . (PDF online)

Contagions: Landscapes of Zoonotic Disease

Kathryn A. Glatter and Paul Finkelman, “History of the Plague: An Ancient Pandemic for the Age of COVID-19,” Am J Med. 2021 Feb, 134(2): 176–181.

Visual Data: Our Pandemic Age = 200 years that changed the world.  

8. Oct 18-20. Cholera and Empire in Afro-Asia

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.

Ref: Wellcome Collection: The Colonist who faced the blue terror.

in class: PPT: Our Pandemic Age

Writing: 1-page response paper #4 due at midnight Wednesday Oct 19. Prompt: How do Plague and Cholera travel as pandemics. Who is most vulnerable? What kinds of protections are in order? Who has done what where and when to provide such protections? These and other questions concern us in this part of the course. You can focus on any of the issues you like concerning the origins, transmission, and solutions to pandemics. 

9. Oct 25-27. Public Health Imperialism

Reading:

J.N.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)

Myron Echenberg, Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague, 1894-1901, New York University Press, 2007. pp. 1-78, 303-12.

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 #5 due at midnight Wednesday Oct 27. Discuss the politics of public health in the age of imperialism.

10. Nov. 1-3. Plague and Cholera: The Past is Present

Echenberg, Plague Ports: The Global Urban Impact of Bubonic Plague, 1894-1901, New York University Press, 2007. pp.79-154, 303-12.

Echenberg, Africa in the Time of Cholera: A History of Pandemics from 1817 to the Present, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp.87-183.

New York Times: Cholera Outbreaks Today, and Discovering Black Plague Immunity Gene.

Nature, September 2022: “Evolution of immune genes is associated
with the Black Death,” by Jennifer Klunk et al

11. Nov 8-10. Plague and Cholera Today: Treatment vs. Prevention

R. Yang R. “Plague: Recognition, Treatment, and Prevention,” J Clin Microbiol. 2017 Dec 26, 56, 1, 519-17.

E.D’Ortenzio et. al, “Plague: Bridging gaps towards better disease control,” Médecine et Maladies Infectieuses,  48, 5, 2018, 307-317. (FULL TEXT PDF online)

Peter Katona, Judit Katona-Apte, “The Interaction between Nutrition and Infection,” Clinical Infectious Diseases,  46, 10, 2008, 1582–1588 (PDF online)

The History of Antibiotics, Microbiology Society. 

Plague in Madagasgar, WHO. 

Cholera Today: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. WHO, Outbreak in Haiti (CDC), Outbreaks in Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) — Diarrhoeal diseases — 

Writing: 5-page paper #2 due by Midnight Sunday Nov 13.  Prompt: Discuss – with any emphasis you like — the ways that imperial systems influence Cholera and/or Plague pandemic experience during the period 1800-1950. You can now use and footnote outside sources, but they must appear with complete citations. You can cover either or both pandemics.  

PART THREE: Our Pandemic Century, 1920-2022

12. Nov 15-17. War, Inequity, Mobility, and Mortality

Ref: Visualizing the History of Pandemics

Class: Discussion of final paper topics. Office hours extended for consultation with instructor on topics for final paper (check out the PANDEMICS RESOURCE PAGE for ideas – building up that page is a collective course project)

Reading:

John Aberth, Plagues in World History, pp 111-135.

Maura Chhun, “1918 flu pandemic killed 12 million Indians …” The Conversation. April 17, 2020.

David Patterson and Gerald Pyle, “ The diffusion of influenza in sub-Saharan Africa during the 1918–1919 pandemic,” Social Science & Medicine, 17, 1, 1983, 1299-1307

Paul Farmer, “Ebola, Spanish Flu and the Memory of disease,“ Critical Inquiry, 46, 2019, 56-71.

Recommended:

Glenn Coin, “Utica embraces its refugees, but they’re bearing the brunt of coronavirus”(Syracuse.com)

Nancy Tomes, “’Destroyer and Teacher”: Managing the Masses During the 1918-1919 Flu Pandemic.” Public Health Reports, 2010, 125, 48-62.

Alfred W Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918, Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Jane Elizabeth Fisher, Envisioning Disease, Gender, and War: Women’s Narratives of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

CDC past pandemics

Writing: Draft synopsis for final paper OPTIONAL.

Nov 22-24 No Class. Thanksgiving Break.

13. Nov 29-Dec 1. Ecology, Inequity, Healthcare, and Capitalism

Study: Our Pandemic Age and 200 years that changed the world.  

Bring to class: Questions that you might use to focus your final paper. See Week 15 for ideas.

Reading:

World Economic Forum, “Coronavirus isn’t an outlier,,,”

Pierre-Marie David, Nicolas Le Dévédec, Anouck Alary, “Pandemics in the age of the Anthropocene: Is ‘planetary health’ the answer?” Global Public Health, 16, 2021, 8-9: “Politics and Pandemics,” 1141-1154 (PDF online)

NCBI Review of Mike Davis, The Monster Enters: COVID 19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism. New York and London: OR Books. 205 pp. (PDF online 4pp)

Jeff Tollefson, “Why deforestation makes pandemics more likely,” Nature, 584, 13 August 2020 (online PDF) (2pp)

Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Sundaram, “Privatized Healthcare Worsens Pandemic.” (2pp,)

Jay S. Kaufman, “Science Alone Can’t Heal a Sick Society,” NYTimes, Sept 12, 2021. Human Rights Watch, “United States: Pandemic Impact on People in Poverty,” 2021. Oxfam report: “The Inequality Virus”

Pandemics and the Poor,” The Brookings Institute, 2017.

India Today: “How Covid-19 crisis has exposed India’s growing wealth gap”

Viewing: David Cross: Why America Sucks at Everything – especially health

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

Reference

Institute of Medicine, et al. The Influence of Global Environmental Change on Infectious Disease Dynamics. Workshop Summary, edited by Alison Mack, and Eileen R. Choffnes, National Academies Press, 2014.

14. Dec 6-8. Pandemic Society and Political Economy

Reading:

John Aberth, Plagues in World History, pp.135-179.

AIDS mortality Map 2017.

JP Mackenbach, “Politics is nothing but medicine at a larger scale: reflections on public health’s biggest idea,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 3 December 2008, 181-184. (Good Wikipedia on Rudolph Virchow)

Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. University of California Press, 2004, pp.1-22, 213-46.

Shashank Kumar &Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, “Are we all in this together? COVID-19, imperialism, and the politics of belonging, ” Curriculum Inquiry, 50, 3, 2020, 195-204. 

Covid-19: An Occupational Disease. Where Frontline Workers are Best Protected.

WHO official says Booster shots “make a mockery of vaccine equity. NYT 20 Aug21

“Viral Pandemics of the Last Four Decades: Pathophysiology, Health Impacts and Perspectives,”  by Shubhadeep Roychoudhury, et al.  in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health,  2020, 17(24), 9411

Social Pressure and Public Health. New Yorker Cartoon, Nov 28

Recommended:

Coronavirus in Africa: Five reasons why Covid-19 has been less deadly than elsewhere

Mark Honigsbaum, The Pandemic Century : One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris, Hurst and Company, 2019. pp261-266.

Xiaoping Fang. China and the Cholera Pandemic: Restructuring Society under Mao, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021.

Patricia Siplon, “The Troubled Path to HIV/AIDS Universal Treatment Access: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory?” Chapter 1, in Global HIV/AIDS Politics, Policy, and Activism : Persistent Challenges and Emerging Issues, edited by Raymond A. Smith, and Raymond A Smith, ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2013, pp.3-26.

Chinmayee Mishra and Navaneeta Rath, “Social solidarity during a pandemic: Through and beyond Durkheimian Lens,” Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 2, 1, 2020. (PDF online)

Viewing: (36min): Ludden, “Global Pandemic in National Territory.” Oct 5, 2020. And Global Asia Webinar on Migration, Globalization, and Covid-19, Oct 23, 2020. For up-to-date Covid pandemic data (12 Dec 2022), search “New York Times Covid” and “New York Times Covax.” 

 

15. Dec 13. 5-page paper #3 due by Midnight Friday Dec 16.

Rubric:

• This paper will be on a topic you choose among those that we consider in Part Three, focusing on the century since and including World War One.
• You can use outside sources but make sure they are reliable and cite them thoroughly.
• Good prose, short paragraphs, strong argument, and clear demonstration of factual knowledge earn good grades.
• Here are some questions which might help to focus your papers, but you can propose other questions instead. We discuss questions and potential answers in class.
  • What explains the increasing frequency of pandemics?
  • Are pandemics necessarily political?
  • How do nation states affect pandemic politics?
  • How does inequality affect the impact of pandemics?
  • What is the relationship between pandemics and climate change?
  • Can medical science solve the pandemic problem?