LHUMK/History 4393.01/History 7395.01:

Disease and Society from Antiquity to the Present

Mondays 6-8 (8:40 for UALR students)
Medical Humanities Conference Room
Freeway Medical Building, 5th floor
Laura Ackerman Smoller, Ph.D.
Office hours:  Wednesday, 3-4, Friday, 2:30-3:30, and by appointment
Office:  Stabler Hall (UALR) 604K
Phone:  569-8389
email: lasmoller@ualr.edu
http://www.ualr.edu/lasmoller

Week 1. August 24. Introduction: Ways of thinking about disease and society.

Week 2. August 31. Disease as an agent of historical change.

Reading:
William McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New York, 1975), pp. 1-13, 146-50, 160-65;
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel:  The Fate of Human Societies (New York, 1997), 13-14, 195-215.

Lecture: A history of histories of disease.

Week 3. September 7. Labor Day holiday.

Week 4.  September 14. The "social construction" of disease.

Reading:
Elaine Showalter, Hystories:  Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture (New York, 1997), pp. 115-32;
Burkhard Bilger, "Letter from Kentucky: Squirrel and Man," The New Yorker (July 17, 2000): 58-67.

Lecture:  Disease and "Others."

Week 5. September 21. Different cultures, different understandings of disease.

Reading:
Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (New York: The Noonday Press, 1997), pp. vii-ix, 1-11, 20-23, 38-49, 140-53, 171-80, 250-61 (optional: 278-88).

Lecture: Disease and medicine in the ancient world.

Week 6.  September 28. The Hippocratic understanding of disease.

Reading:
Hippocrates, Epidemics, book 1: 1-3, in J. Chadwick and W. N. Mann, trans., Hippocratic Writings, pp. 87-89;
The Sacred Disease, ibid., pp. 237-51;
Hippocratic Oath;
"Cures of Apollo and Asclepius," in Georg Luck, ed. and trans., Arcana Mundi: Magic and the Occult in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp. 142-45.

Lecture:  The medieval view of disease.

Week 7. October 5. Leprosy in the medieval world.

Reading:
R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford, 1987), pp. 45-65, 73-80;
Ritual of Separation of a Leper, from the Old Sarum Rite;
Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge, UK:  Boydell, 2006), pp. 13-29, 39-43 (optional: 302-14, 343).

Lecture:  The experience of plague.

Week 8. October 12. Plague in early modern Europe.

Reading:
Carlo Cipolla, Faith, Reason, and the Plague in Seventeenth-Century Tuscany (New York, 1979), pp. 1-85 (small pages and a fast read!).

Lecture: The emergence of the "French pox."

Week 9. October 19. Syphilis in early modern Europe.

Reading:
Anna Foa, "The New and the Old: The Spread of Syphilis (1494-1530)," trans. Carole C. Gallucci, in Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, eds., Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective.  Selections from Quaderni Storici (Baltimore, 1990), pp. 26-45.

Lecture:  Disease, medicine, and society in early modern Europe.

Week 10.  October 26.  The fashionable disease of gout.

Reading: 
Roy Porter, "Gout, Framing and Fantasizing Disease,"  Bulletin of the History of Medicine 68 (1994): 1-28.

Lecture: The cholera epidemics of the nineteenth century.

Week 11. November 2.  Cholera.

Reading:
Richard J. Evans, "Epidemics and Revolutions: Cholera in Nineteenth-Century Europe," in Terrence Ranger and Paul Slack, eds., Epidemics and Ideas, as above, pp. 149-73;
(optional: Edgar Allen Poe, "The Mask of the Red Death").

Lecture: The progressive era and the science of eugenics

Week 12. November 9.  "Degeneracy," "defectives," euthanasia, and eugenics.

Reading:
Martin S. Pernick, The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915 (New York and Oxford, 1996), pp. 1-18, 81-99.

Lecture: Feminism, the "new woman," and gender anxiety in the late 19^th century

Week 13. November 16.  Hysteria and its treatments.

Reading:
Rachel P. Maines, The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), ch. 1, pp. 1-20 (optional pp. 67-110);
Elaine Showalter, Hystories:  Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture (New York, 1997), pp. 30-48.

Lecture:  The emergence of AIDS.

Week 14. November 23.  Venereal diseases in modern America.

Reading:
Allan M. Brandt, "The Syphilis Epidemic and Its Relation to AIDS," Science 239 (1988): 375-80;
Upton Sinclair and Eugene Brieux, Damaged Goods (1913), pp. 10-19, 26-29, 40-41 (entire text on-line at: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1157);
Paul Monette, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (San Diego, New York, and London, 1988), pp. 1-26.

Lecture:  The coming plague?

Week 15. November 30. Emerging threats?

Reading:
Laurie Garrett,  "The Next Pandemic?" Foreign Affairs 84 (July/August 2005): 3ff (printout from Academic Search Premier);
Vian Azzu, "Swine Flu:  How Experts Are Preparing Their Families," New Scientist (August 12, 2009);
Jill Lepore, "It's Sreading:  Outbreaks, Media Scares, and the Parrot Panic of 1930," The New Yorker (June 1, 2009): 46-50.

Week 16.  December 7.  Disease in the media.

No reading!  Dinner and a movie, followed by a discussion of the portrayal of disease in the film.

Course requirements for UAMS seniors:

• Attendance at all weekly discussions. (Please make alternative arrangements with me if you will be on an away rotation or at a residency interview.)
• Completion of all reading assignments.  All readings will be distributed in class.  Please make arrangements to pick up a copy of the reading if you must miss a class.
  
• A 1 to 2-page reading response, to be handed in on the Monday each reading assignment is discussed. I will grade these responses on a 10-point scale. I am looking for: 1) a brief summary of the reading(s); 2) some critique of the reading, a comparison with another reading or a current situation, and/or some question(s) for discussion that arises from the reading (e.g., "I think McNeill overstates the case for disease's role in history because . . . ." or "The experiences of leprosy and plague seem very similar in that . . . ." or "Do you think leprosaria would work for AIDS patients?"); and 3) specific quotations or examples from the readings.     An adequate summary will result in a score of 7 points; adding elements 2) and 3) will result in scores of 8, 9, and 10.

Additional requirements for UALR students (3 credit hours):

• UALR students receiving 3 hours of credit, in addition to the above, will research a topic in the history of disease chosen in consultation with the instructor, culminating in a paper (14-16 pages for undergraduates; 15-20 pages for graduate students). We will have weekly progress reports on the research projects on Mondays at 8-8:40 p.m., after the week's discussion and lecture. (I will hand out a schedule of due dates for various milestones in the research project; successfully completing each of these milestones on schedule will count for your final grade.) You may work on any topic you choose, provided it somehow deals with the relationship between disease and society. You might, for example, read medical journals or women's magazines from the turn of the century to see how they describe syphilis or tuberculosis, or you might read a work of literature dealing with disease, such as Kushner's Angels in America, to study how his society viewed disease.  Or you might read an old history book dealing with disease, such as Hans Zinsser's Rats, Lice, and History, to see how past authors have envisioned the relation between disease and society.

Grading:

Grades for UAMS students will be computed as follows:

Reading responses--60%
Class participation--40%

Grades for UALR undergraduates and graduate students receiving 3 hours of credit will be computed as follows:

Reading responses--30%
Final paper--35%
Meeting intermediate deadlines for the research project--20%
Class participation--15%

Grades are computed on the following scale:

A=90-100%
B=80-89%
C=70-79%
D=60-69%
F=0-59%

In case of some mix-up, it is a good idea to save all returned work until you receive your grade at the end of the semester.

Student learning objectives for upper-level courses in history:

1.  Demonstrate a significant degree of knowledge about both United States and World history through completion of a broad selection of courses in history.
2.  Ask appropriate historical questions that demonstrate an understanding of the discipline of history and distinguish it from those of other disciplines.
3.  Distinguish between primary sources and secondary sources used in the writing of history and know how to use and analyze each appropriately. Students will thus be able to:
a.   Analyze a primary source as a product of a particular historical context;
b.   Respond critically to a secondary source, taking into account the primary sources used by the historian, the historian’s methodology, the logic of the argument, and other major interpretations in the field.
4.  Present historical analysis and arguments in a clear written form, including the ability to construct an argument by marshalling evidence in an appropriate and logical fashion.
5.  Write a research paper that asks a significant historical question, answers it with a clear thesis and a logical argument, supports it with both primary and secondary sources documented according to the standards of the Chicago Manual of Style, and is written in clear and artful prose with the grammar and spelling associated with formal composition.

Students with disabilities:  It is the policy and practice of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to create inclusive learning environments.  If there are aspects of the instruction or design of this course that result in barriers to your inclusion or to accurate assessment of achievement--such as time-limited exams, inaccessible web content, or the use of non-captioned videos--please notify the instructor as soon as possible.  Students are also welcome to contact the Disability Resource Center, telephone 501-569-3143 (v/tty). For more information, visit the DRC website at www.ualr.edu/disability.  

Classroom etiquette: Please turn off cell phones and beepers before entering the classroom or set them to a silent alert; do not read or send text messages in class. In the rare event you must enter late or leave class early, please let me know in advance.

Cheating and plagiarism: Cheating and plagiarism are serious offenses and will be treated as such.  ("Plagiarism" means "to adopt and reproduce as one's own, to appropriate to one's use, and incorporate in one's own work without acknowledgment the ideas of others or passages from their writings and works." See Section VI, Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities and Behavior, Student Handbook, p. 39. Copying directly from the textbook or an encyclopedia article without quotation marks or an identifying citation, for example, constitutes plagiarism.)  Anyone who engages in such activities will receive a failing grade in the course and will be turned over to the Academic Integrity and Grievance Committee for University disciplinary action, which may include separation from the University.

Copyright notice: Copyright © by Laura Smoller as to this syllabus and all lectures. Students and auditors are prohibited from selling notes during this course to (or being paid for taking notes by) any person or commercial firm without the express written permission of the professor teaching this course.