HIS-265 The Black Death and Beyond: How Disease Has Changed History
This course is a global history of medicine and disease, from antiquity to the present. It investigates the manifold ways in which plague, smallpox, typhus, syphilis, typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, scurvy, malaria, influenza, COVID and other diseases have shaped human history, from the Paleolithic era, to ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the medieval Christian and Islamic worlds, the Age of Exploration, the Industrial Revolution and beyond. It also explores how civilization and human activity (agriculture, urbanization, trade, imperialism, war, migration, medical and technological progress etc.) have, in turn, influenced the origins and course of diseases, and generated history's greatest epidemics and pandemics.
Course Learning Outcomes
- Explain the ways in which medical theories and practices reflect the distinctive features of Western civilization; its history, institutions, geography, economy, religions, society, and/or culture.
- Connect developments in Western medicine to those of other regions of the world.
- Analyze some of the major events and themes of Western and/or global medical history.