Plagues and Peoples
Special Topics: 42-404-01
Fall semester, 2004, MWF 12-12:50
Professor Jeanette Keith
Office hours: Monday-Friday, 11-12.
Office OSH 133; phone 4167; best way to reach me: keith@bloomu.edu
This class explores the impact of disease on
human societies, focusing on the history of the United States.
Books:
McNeill, Plagues and Peoples.
Selected readings available for photocopy in Andruss Library. (Ask at circulation desk.)
Course Requirements:
Class participation: 10% of grade. Students are expected to attend each class session. Students will receive a discussion grade every day based on their participation in the class and their demonstrated familiarity with the readings. Should a student need to miss class, he or she should contact Dr. Keith prior to the absence. Excuses will be given for absences that fit within the guidelines in the student Pilot. Each student can have one free class "cut." After that, each unexcused absence will result in five points being removed from the student’s discussion grade.
Tests: Midterm, 25%; Final, 30%
Team Project: 15%
Term Paper: 20%
For their term paper, students will write an historiographic review essay on three articles from scholarly journals. See details following class outline. Note: at the end of the semester, the student will hand in a folder containing the final draft of the term paper, and all the intermediate stages thereof: the journal articles, rough draft, etc.
Academic Integrity. In this class, we will follow university policy concerning matters of academic integrity. You can find this policy on the University’s web site, under "Academics." Look for "Academic Policies," and then "Academic Integrity." University policy PRP 3512 will explain the seriousness of cheating, plagiarism and other issues of academic honesty. Please take some time and read this page! Since much of the class grade comes from written essays and take-home exams, be especially aware of the problem of plagiarism. Any student who plagiarizes or otherwise cheats on an assignment will receive an automatic zero for that assignment grade.
The assignments below may be modified during the course. Such modifications will be announced in class.
Class Schedule
Aug. 30. Introduction to class
Sept. 1. Some basic science
Sept. 3. Plagues and Peoples, introduction and chapter 1
Sept. 6 Labor Day
Plague: the paradigm pestilence in western culture
Sept. 8. Plagues and Peoples, Chapter 2
Sept. 10. Plagues and Peoples, Chapter 3. Reading, Thucydides on the plague in Athens.
Sept. 13. Plagues and Peoples, Chapter 4.
Sept. 15. The Black Death. Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of the West, Chapters 1 and 2. Document: Introduction to Boccaccio’s Decameron
Sept. 17. Prof. William Hudon, guest lecture. Note: we will join Prof. Hudon’s class, which is held in Bakeless.
Sept. 20. Revisionist view. Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., "The Black Death: End of a Paradigm." http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/107.3/ah0302000703.html
Documents: excerpts from Defoe, "Journal of the Plague Year." Two poems:"Lament for the Makers" and "In Time of Pestilence:"
World Exploration, Empire, and Disease
Sept. 22. Plagues and Peoples, Chapter 5. Term Paper: List of articles due to Dr. Keith
Sept. 24. The Columbian Exchange: Crosby, The Columbian Exchange, "Conquistador y Pestilencia," 35-63.
Sept.27. Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel, "Lethal Gift of Livestock," 195-214.
Sept. 29. Film excerpt from 500 Nations: De Soto’s March
Oct. 1. Malaria and Yellow Jack: the impact of the African slave trade on the American disease environment
Oct. 4. Film, The Syphilis Enigma Term paper: Photocopies of journal articles to Dr. Keith.
Oct. 6. Smallpox and the American Revolution.
Oct. 8 Yellow Fever, Philadelphia, 1790s. Student team report
Oct. 11 Midterm
The Cultural and Social Impact of Disease in America, 1800-1920
Oct. 13. Disease, Death and Culture: social constructs of real bugs
Oct. 15. No class, reading day
Oct. 18 What we talk about when we talk about epidemics: Rosenberg, "What is an epidemic?" from Explaining Epidemics.
Oct. 20. Tuberculosis, la vie Boheme, and emerging ideals of feminine beauty. Excerpt from Howard Markel, When Germs Travel, 24-28
Oct. 22. TB as a social issue. Markel, When Germs Travel, 28-46.
Oct. 25. TB in Pennsylvania and the U.S. Student team report.
Oct. 27. Cholera: Disease of Empire. Excerpt from Wills, Yellow Fever, Black Goddess, pp. 109-119.
Oct. 29. The Epidemiological Revolution.
Nov. 1. Cholera in New York. Student team report
Nov. 3. The Emergence of Public Health
Nov. 5 Bubonic Plague in San Francisco Student team report
Nov. 8. The Great Influenza. Excerpt Barry, The Great Influenza, 220-241.
Nov. 10. Film: Influenza, 1918
Nov. 12. Influenza; town study, Bloomsburg. Student team report.
Mid-Century Miracles
Nov. 15. Plagues and Peoples, Chapter 6.
Nov. 17. An end to infectious diseases?
Nov. 19. Film: A Paralyzing Fear
Nov. 22. Biological Warfare. Special guest speaker, Dr. Jeff Long. Term paper: First draft of paper due.
Thanksgiving Break
Emerging Diseases and the Dubious Consolations of Science
Nov. 29. AIDS. Film: And the Band Played On; will be begun in class, and continued Monday night. Read excerpt from Garrett, The Coming Plague, 283-310, so that you will recognize characters in the film.
Dec. 1. AIDS. Special guest speaker: Dr. Michael A. Foltzer, M.D., Geisinger specialist in infectious diseases
Dec. 3 AIDS.
Dec. 6. Ebola, West Nile, and all that scary stuff. Garrett, The Coming Plague, 1-12. Monday night: film, Outbreak.
Dec. 8. Review
Dec. 10. Final draft of paper due.
Student Reports:
At various points during the semester, student teams will do class presentations. The class presentation topics and dates are as follows:
Oct. 8. Yellow Fever, Philadelphia, 1790s.
Oct. 25. Tuberculosis in Pennsylvania and the United States, late 19th/early 20th century.
Nov. 1. Cholera in New York, 19th Century.
Nov. 5. Bubonic Plague in San Francisco, early 20th century.
Nov. 12. Influenza, 1918, focus on Bloomsburg.
These reports should include the following: description of the symptoms and etiology of the disease; efforts made to understand and control the epidemic; effects of the disease on locale during epidemic and afterward.
Dr. Keith will provide a folder of possible sources for these reports. Students should meet with her at least a week before the presentation, bringing with them an outline of what they propose to do. Presentations will be graded on: the effective use of sources, the quality of content, the quality of presentation, the professionalism of the presenters. Students in the class will be asked to critique these presentations.
Term papers: Students will write a 10-15 page historiographic review paper on the history of a disease/epidemic in the United States.
For your term paper, you will choose three articles from scholarly journals, all with the same theme, and write a historiographic review essay comparing and contrasting the articles. You will follow these steps:
Get a folder: you will need it to hand in each phase of this project. Put your name on the front.
1. Choose your topic and your articles.
A. Topics. Articles chosen must be about the topics of the course, and must focus on American history.
B. Quality. Your articles must be from scholarly journals. These journals publish articles in which professional historians present work containing original research documented through footnotes. Professional journals require from three to five historians to review each article for accuracy before it is published. You may find these articles indexed in the university library’s data bases. "American History and Life" and "J-Stor" are especially useful; also, check out the History Cooperative web site,
which gives you access to several major historical journals.
Note: your list of articles must be handed in on Sept. 22.
2. Obtain your articles. Andruss Library has a limited budget for academic journals. Although you may be able to obtain some articles at the library or on-line, it is most likely that you will have to order at least some of your articles through interlibrary loan. This typically takes a few weeks. Therefore, you should begin to gather your material immediately after the articles are approved by Dr. Keith
Note: Photocopies of your articles must be handed in to Dr. Keith on Oct. 4.
3. Read and compare. To write a historiographic review essay, you first read the articles, all of which should have similar topics. Make notes on what themes and ideas are shared by all the articles. Make notes on how they differ: in concept, view, research methodology, etc.
4. Write: follow the guidelines below for format and content.
Your paper should be 10 to 15 pages long, typed, in a font no smaller than 11 and no larger than 12.
Your final paper should have a front-page, with a title and your name.
Note: see printed syllabus for example of correct title page format.
B. Content. From the notes that you have made, write a first paragraph in which you state the thesis of your paper. The thesis is the point you are going to make. NOTE: in a historiographic review, the point is NOT about the actual history you have read, but about the topic you have chosen. Taking the articles above as an example: you would NOT start by saying "My thesis is that Indians were treated unjustly by the U.S. government in the late 19th century." You would start with something more like this: "These five articles, all about Indians at the turn of the last century, share in common these themes...
State the themes, then introduce each article, summarizing its individual theme and thesis:
Once you have introduced the articles, then summarize the content of each, individually, in turn. When professional historians do this in review articles for journals, the point is to provide enough information about the article so that their fellow historians can see if they need to read the entire piece. You do the same, but remember that your main goal is to convince the professor that you did read the article!
After summarizing the article, critique it. Tell the reader whether this is a worthy piece of work. Does it tell us something about the topic? Is the research good, or thin, lacking in original sources? Is the article well-organized? Note: do not critique a piece by saying that it had a lot of hard words in it, or that it was boring. Like all research pieces, whether in history or biology or chemistry, the author is writing for a professional audience, who will either know the words or get out their dictionary and look them up; moreover, unfortunately, lots of useful research is not very exciting.
Finally, summarize: tie up your paper by summarizing briefly the contributions, good or bad, that these articles make to the field (in this case, Indian history) being studied.
Note: your rough draft must be turned in on Nov. 24.
C. Rewrite. All good writers spend almost as much time rewriting as they do writing. After the professor reviews your paper, she will meet with you, and tell you what you need to do to improve the paper. You will get a grade on your rough draft. That will BE your grade unless you do the suggested rewrite.
Note: Your final draft is due Dec. 10
Turn in your first list of articles, your photocopied articles, your rough draft and your final draft, all in a pocket folder.
Final Warning:
Be aware of the danger of plagiarism. A plagiarized paper, one with extensive copying from sources, will receive a zero, and I will turn in the case to the University for disciplinary action.
Be aware that the articles chosen must be from scholarly journals. No book reviews, no magazine articles, no web pages: just articles from scholarly journals. Any unauthorized sources appearing in the final draft of the paper will result in a zero.
Be aware that Prof. Keith will take points off for late work. If you miss the deadline turning in your list of articles, 10 points will be taken off your final grade. If you miss the deadline getting in the photocopies, 10 points. For missing the rough draft deadline, 50 points. For missing the final deadline, 75 points.
Quick Fact Sources
In case you don't know... symptoms and causes of historically significant diseases
All of the following were found on the web site maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: http://www.cdc.gov/ You will find this site contains a wealth of information about current as well as historical diseases, their causes and prevention.
You may also wish to look at the National Institutes of Health web site: http://www.nih.gov/
Smallpox. http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/overview/disease-facts.asp Syphilis. http://www.cdc.gov/std/Syphilis/STDFact-Syphilis.htm Plague. http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/plague/factsheet.asp TB. http://www.cdc.gov/travel/diseases/tb.htm Cholera. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/cholera_g.htm AIDS. http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pubs/faqs.htm Yellow Fever. http://www.cdc.gov/travel/diseases/yellowfever.htm Malaria. http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/faq.htm From the Mayo Clinic: AIDS. http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?id=DS00005
From the University of Utah: Polio. http://www.med.utah.edu/healthinfo/adult/infectious/polio.htm