DISEASE IN HISTORY
UA 265 Freshman Seminar
New York University
Fall Term 2014
Professor Richard W. Hull
Department of History
53 Washington Square South
Suite 710
e-mail: richard.hull@nyu.edu
phone: 212-998-8649
Course Description
This freshman seminar will focus on the historical dimensions of several major epidemics
and pandemics that profoundly affected human societies in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the
Americas. Students will identify each disease and explore its causes, origins, means of
transmission, efforts at prevention containment, and eradication. You will weigh the
impacts of major infectious diseases on specific civilizations and human communities in
history, from antiquity to the present. You will assess the effects of each disease on
demographics, religion, economies, and lifestyles.
The seminar will address a wide range of questions and issues including: the extent to
which epidemics or plagues accelerated or retarded fundamental changes in human
relationships, economic activities, population movements and spatial patterns of
residence. It will also explore power relationships within societies and between them and
the ways individuals and groups viewed themselves and their universe.
Course Requirements
Everyone will read a common core of books which will be discussed during each class
period. You will be expected to read each book before the class meeting. The Discussions
and your own research project will revolve around several themes, including:
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The nature of the disease: its life cycle, its toxicity, the victim’s symptoms and
outcomes
Origins of the disease: Its natural reservoirs. Identification, definition, and
perception of risk
Means of transmission into the wider community: the carriers or vectors
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Physiological and psychological responses of the human body and of the
collective human community to the disease. Denial and resistance.
Coping and survival: Mutations and Adaptations of the infectious disease to its
new environment and adaptations of the host to the microbial invasion.
Treatments: Institutional measures to prevent, contain, and eradicate the disease
from the human population
Winners and Losers: Effects of plagues on the rise and fall, expansion and
contraction of key civilizations in history
Placing the Blame: Disease and racial and ethnic stereotyping and profiling
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After carefully scanning the bibliography below you will select works relevant to your
disease or topic. After reading those books you will begin to develop a title or theme for
your research topic or specific disease. The works should then lead you to those of other
scholars or experts. In other words, you will take relevant texts from the bibliography as
the starting point of your research project and then research more deeply drawing upon
additional sources from the library and the internet. Before October 1st you should
schedule an appointment to consult with Professor Hull on the progress you’ve made
with your project.
During the semester you will make a presentation to the class on some aspect of your
research. The presentation will be limited to 30 minutes. The research paper should be
passed in by the last day of classes in December. It should be approximately 5200 words
plus a bibliography of at least 25 sources. You will also write a 330-word review or
critique of each required core reading, indicating the author’s thesis and key arguments.
Each review is due on the day that the book will be discussed in the seminar.
Course grade will be determined by the quality of your oral presentation and overall class
participation (30%), your critiques (20%), and your research paper (50%). You will be
expected to attend ALL seminar meetings. If you cannot attend one of the meetings, it is
your responsibility to notify Professor Hull and also to obtain notes from a student who
did attend. Frequent absences from the seminar can seriously affect the quality of your
course performance.
Required Core Readings
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Albert Camus.
John Barry.
Susan Sontag.
John Aberth.
Irwin W. Sherman.
David Oshinsky.
The Plague.
The Great Influenza.
Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors.
Black Death: The Great Mortality of 1348-50.
Twelve Diseases that Changed our World.
Polio: An American Story.
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Select Bibliography
John Aberth. Plagues in World History.
Thomas Abraham. Twenty-First Century Plague: The Story of SARS.
Fred Ahwireng-Obeng. The Impact of HIV-AIDS on African Economies.
Suzanne Austin Alchon. A Pest in the Land: New World Epidemics in Global
Perspective.
Robert A. Aronowitz. Making Sense of Illness: Science, Society, & Disease.
John T. Alexander. Bubonic Plague in Early Modern Russia.
David S. Barnes. The Making of a Social Disease: Tuberculosis in 19th century France.
Tony Barnett & Alan Whiteside. AIDS in the Twenty-First Century: Disease and
Globalization.
Ole J. Benedictow. The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History.
Baruch S. Blumberg. Hepatitis B:The Hunt for a Killer Virus.
Alfred Jay Bollet. Plagues & Poxes: The Rise & Fall of Epidemic Disease.
W.R. Bett. The History & Conquest of Common Diseases.
Giovanni Boccaccio. Decameron.
Jennifer Brower & Peter Chalk. The Global Threat of New Reemerging Infectious
Diseases.
Patrice Bourdelais. Epidemics Laid Low: A History of What Happened in Rich
Countries.
R.S. Bray. Armies of Pestilence: The Impact of Disease on History.
Chris Bright. Life Out of Bounds: Bioinvasion in a Borderless World.
Nancy K. Bristow. American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza
Epidemic.
William Broad. Biological Weapons & America’s Secret War.
Anthony Bourdain. Typhoid Mary.
William Brown et al., Syphilis and Other Venereal Diseases.
Jennifer Lee Carrell. The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox.
Molly Caldwell Crosby. The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the
Epidemic that Shaped our History.
G.W. Christopher et al. Biological Warfare: A Historical Perspective (JAMA, 1997).
Alfred Crosby. America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918.
Alfred Crosby. The Columbian Exchange: Biological consequences of 1492.
Alfred Crosby. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe-900-1900.
C.M. Cipolla. Fighting the Plague in 17th century Italy.
C.M. Cipolla. Miasmas and Diseases: Public Health & the Environment in the preIndustrial Age.
A.G. Carmichael. Plague & the Poor in Renaissance Florence.
Norman Cantor. In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death & the World it Made.
Georges Canguilhem. Writings on Medicine (trans;. Stefanos Geroulanos). Leonard A.
Cole. The Eleventh Plague: Politics of Biological & Chemical Warfare.
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Pete Davies. The Devil’s Flu: The World’s Deadliest Influenza Epidemic and the
Scientific Hunt for the Virus that Caused It.
Raymond Crawford. Plague & Pestilence in Literature & Art.
Mark Nathan Cohen. Health & the Rise of Civilization
Sam K. Cohn. The Black Death Transformation: Disease & Culture in Early Renaissance
Europe.
Leonard A. Cole. The Eleventh Plague: The Politics of Biological and Chemical Warfare.
Noble David Cook. Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650.
Dorothy Crawford. The Invisible Enemy: A Natural history of Viruses.
Laurence I Conrad. Contagion: Perspectives from pre-Modern Societies.
Alfred Crosby. The Columbian Exchange: Biological Consequences of 1492.
Philip D. Curtin. Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in the
19th century.
Malcolm Dando. The New Biological Weapons: Threat, Proliferation, and Control.
George Deaux. The Black Death.
Francois Delaporte. The History of Yellow Fever: An Essay on the Birth of Tropical
Medicine.
Francois Delaporte. Chagas Disease: History of a Continent’s Scourge.
Daniel Defoe. A Journal of the Plague Year.
Mary J. Dobson. Disease: The Extraordinary Stories behind History’s deadliest Killers.
C.W. Dixon. Smallpox.
Thomas Dormandy. The White Death: A History of Tuberculosis.
Sidney Drill, Abraham D. Sofaer. The New Terror: Facing the Threat of Biological and
Chemical Weapons.
Rene Dubois. The White plague: Tuberculosis, Man, and Society.
John Duffy. Epidemcis in Colonial America.
Robert S. Desowitz. The Malaria Capers.
Malcolm Dando. The New Biological Weapons: Threat, Proliferation, and Control.
Myron Echenberg. Africa in the Time of Cholera: A History of Pandemics from 1817 to
the Present.
Stephen Endicott & Edward Hagerman. The U.S. & Biological Warfare.
Stephen Engberg & Judith Miller. Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s secret
War.
Helen Epstein. The Invisible cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS.
Richard Evans. Death in Hamburg: Society & Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830-1910.
Peter Elmer & Ole Grell. Health, Disease & Society in Europe, 1500-1800.
Max Essex et al. AIDS in Africa (2nd edition).
Patricia J. Fanning. Influenza and Inequality:One Town’s Tragic Response to the Great
Epidemic of 1918.
Elizabeth A. Fenn. Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82.
Elizabeth Fee & Daniel Fox. AIDS: The Burden of History.
Steven Feierman & John Janzen. The Social Basis of Health & Healing in Africa.
Georgia D. Feldberg. Disease & Class: Tuberculosis and the Shaping of Modern North
American Society.
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Simon Finger. The Contagious City: The Politics of Public Health in Early Philadelphia.
William H. Foege. House on Fire: The Fight to Eradicate Smallpox.
Laurie Garrett. The Coming Plague.
R.S. Gottfried. The Black Death.
Denise Grady. Deadly Invaders: Virus Outbreaks around the World, from Marburg Fever
to Avian Flu.
Mirko D. Grmek. History of AIDS: Emergence & Origin of a Modern Pandemic.
Edward C. Green. Indigenous Theories of Contagious Disease.
Jeanne Guillemin. Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak.
David Gentilcore. Healers & Healing in Early Modern Italy.
John Hatcher. The Black Death: A Personal History.
Wendy Holmes. Protecting the Future: HIV Prevention, care and Support Among
Displaced and War-Affected Populations.
Mark Honigsbaum. The Fever Trail: The Hunt for a Cure for Malaria.
Leonard Horowitz. Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola.
Thomas Hull. Disease Transmitted from Animals to Man.
Margaret Humphreys. Yellow Fever and the South.
Susan Hunter. Black Death: AIDS in Africa.
George Huppert. After the Black Death: A Social History of Early Modern Europe.
David Herlihy. The Black Death & the Transformation of the West.
Deborah Hayden. Pox: Genius, Madness, & the Mysteries of Syphilis.
J.N. Hays. The Burdens of disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western history.
Evelynn M. Hammonds. Childhood Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control
Diphtheria, 1880-1930.
Hendrik Ibsen. Ghosts (on syphilis)
John Iliffe. The African AIDS Epidemic: A History.
Steven Johnson. The Ghost Map. (on cholera)
Kyle Kauffmann & David L. Lindauer (eds) AIDS and South Africa: The Social
Expression of a Pandemic.
John Kelly. The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most
Devastating Plague of all Time.
Kenneth Kiple. Plagues, Pox & Pestilence.
E.D. Kilbourne. Influenza.
Jeffrey Kluger. Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio.
Gina Kolata. FLU: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918.
Alan M. Kraut. Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes and the ‘Immigrant’ Menace.
Bruno Latour. The Pasteurization of France.
Evan Lieberman. Boundaries of Contagion: How Ethnic Politics have shaped government
responses to AIDS.
Lester K. Little. Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541-750.
Maryinez Lyons. A Colonial disease: A Social History of Sleeping Sickness.
Jock McCulloch. Asbestos Blues.
Jim Murphy. An American Plague: The Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793.
Arien Mack. In the Time of Plague: The History & Social Consequences of Lethal
Epidemic Disease.
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Howard Markel. When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics that have Invaded America
and the Fears they have Unleashed.
Robert A. Mcguire & Philip R.P. Coelho. Parasites, Pathogens, and Progress: Diseases
and Economic Development.
William H. McNeill. Plagues and Peoples.
Alexandre Meinesz. Killer Algae: True Tale of a Biological Invasion.
Lloyd Moot. & Dorothy C. Moore. The Great Plague:London’s Most Deadly Year.
Franco Mormando & Thomas Worcester (eds) Piety and Plague: Byzantium to Baroque.
Jonathan Musere. African Sleeping Sickness.
Marion Nestle. Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism.
Michael B.A. Oldstone. Viruses, Plagues, & History.
Gianna Pomata. Contracting a Cure: Patients & Healers in Early Modern Bologna
Katherine Anne Porter. Pale Horse, Pale Rider. (re: Flu pandemic of 1918)
Randall M. Packard. The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria.
Randall M. Packard. White Plague, Black Labour.
Adell Patton. Physicians, Colonial Racism and Diaspora in West Africa.
Jacques Pepin. The Origins of AIDS.
Alex Perry. Lifeblood. (on malaria)
Richard Preston. The Hot Zone (on Ebola)
Andrew T. Price-Smith. Contagion and Chaos: Disease, Ecology, and National Security.
Claude Quetel. The History of Syphilis. (translation by Judith Braddock)
Terence Ranger & Paul Slack. Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception
of Pestilence.
Lee B. Reichman. Time Bomb: The Global Epidemic of Multi-Drug Resistant T.B.
Fiammetta Rocco. The Miraculous Fever Tree: Malaria, Medicine, and the Quest for a
Cure that Changed the World.
Naomi Rogers. Dirt & Disease: Polio before FDR.
Sheila Rothman. Living in the Shadow if Death: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience
of Illness in American History.
David J. Rothman, Steven Marcus, Stephanie A. Kiceluk (eds) Medicine and Western
Civilization.
Philipp Sarasin. Anthrax: Bioterror as Fact and Fantasy.
Jessica Snyder Sachs. Good Germs, Bad Germs.
Sonia Shah. The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years.
Marc Shell. Polio and Its Aftermath.
Irwin W. Sherman. The Power of Plagues.
Paul Slack. The Impact of the Plague in Tudor and Stuart England.
Alan Smith. Insect Man: A Fight Against Malaria in Africa.
Michael Shnayerson. The Killers within: The Deadly Rise of Drug-Resistant Bacteria.
Andrew Spielman & Michael D’Antonio. Mosquito: A Natural History.
Randy Shilts. And the Band Player On.
Esther Stearn & Allen E. Stearn. The Effect of Smallpox on the Destiny of the American
Indian.
Paul D. Stolley & Tamar Lasky. Investigating Disease Patterns: The Science of
Epidemiology.
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Mark Jerome Walters. Six Modern Plagues and How We are Causing Them. (on the
environment)
Sheldon Watts. Epidemics & History: Disease, Power & Imperialism.
Robert J. Thornton. Unimagined Community: Sex, Networks & AIDS in Uganda &
South Africa.
Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War.
Philip M. Tierno. The Secret Life of Germs.
Craig Timberg & Daniel Halperin. Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS
Epidemic and How the World Can Finally Overcome It.
Nancy Tomes. The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women and the Microbe in American Life.
Barbara Tuchman. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th century.
Jonathan B. Tucker. Scourge: The Once and Future threat of Smallpox.
Abraham Verghese. My Own Country: A Story of a Town and its
People in the Age of AIDS.
Sheldon Watts. Disease and Medicine in World History.
James L.A. Webb,Jr. Humanity’s Burden: A Global History of Malaria.
World Bank Report: Intensifying the Fight against Malaria: The World Bank’s Booster
Program for Malaria Control in Africa (2008 edition).
Daniel J. Wilson. Living with Polio: The Epidemic and its Survivors.
Philip Ziegler. The Black Death.
Raymond A. Zilinskas. (ed) Biological Warfare: Modern Offense and Defense.
Carl Zimmer. Microcosm: E.Coli and the New Science of Life.
Hans Zinsser. Rats, Lice, and History: Mankind’s Epic Struggle to Conquer the Scourge
of Typhus.
Journals, Periodicals etc.
American Journal of Epidemiology.
Annals of Medical History.
Journal of the History of Medicine.
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
New England Journal of Medicine.
World Health Organization (WHO)
Doctors Without Borders Newsletters.
Social History Medicine.
The British Medical Journal.
Scientific American.
Literature and Medicine.
Films on Disease
Outbreak
And the Band Played On
The Monkeys
Ebola: The Plague Fighters (DVD 8467/VCA 5642)
Biological Warfare (VCA 11086)
The War Game
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The Black Death (VCA 7434)
The Scourge of the Black Death VCA 10780
The Plague (VCA 7443)
The White Plague.
Miss Evers’ Boys (DVD 16012)
Who Cares About Malaria
Yesterday (DVD 3936)
Biowarfare (5 parts) (VCA 11086)
The White Plague
Ebola War: The Nurses of Gulu
The Age of AIDS (4 part documentary PBS/wgbh Frontline).
Healers of Ghana. VCA 5699
Order of Presentations
(each student will be assigned a date)
October 15:
October 22:
October 25:
October 29:
November 5:
November 12:
November 19:
November 29:
December 3:
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