SHUM 4675 - Pandemics Past and Pending

(crosslisted) ANTHR 4472, FGSS 4675, STS 4675
(ALC-AS, CA-AS)

Fall. 3 credits. Student option grading.

Co-meets with ANTHR 7472/FGSS 6675/SHUM 6675/STS 6675.

J. Parreñas.

How have epidemics and pandemics changed social worlds and created new futures? How is colonization political and microbial? What will it take to repair human-animal-environmental relations when they can be pathologized as sources of contagion? By examining American colonization of the Philippines, One Health in contemporary Vietnam, and other ethnographic and historical examples, the course shows how interventions that took place in the wake of epidemics have had profound societal and planetary impacts. This course ultimately argues that pandemics are never just about a singular bacterium or virus. Instead, pandemics and epidemics reveal deeper social inequalities, interact with profound cultural and historical relations, and both create and foreclose different kinds of futures. For longer description and instructor bio visit the Society for the Humanities website.