CSP 24 Contagion: From Plague Narratives to the Literature of Public Health

In this course we will study representations of infectious disease from the Early Modern period to the present day, using these texts as case studies for some of the most pressing political, philosophical, and aesthetic concerns of our age. Plague narratives are an ideal arena in which to investigate the legal, ethical, and conceptual relationships between individual subjects, bodies, and the “body public,” questions about human nature and the state of nature, and questions about how governments form and what the best types of government are. We’ll also analyze how disease in these texts highlights or complicates contemporary conceptions of “otherness,” and how plague narratives employ different narrative frameworks (providential, rational, existential, etc.). Finally, we’ll consider how these texts metaphorize illness and contagion as a way of thinking about other topics (for example: colonialism, print culture, revolutionary politics, and moral decline)—but we’ll also think carefully about the ethical and aesthetic implications of those metaphors. Readings to include Defoe, Dracula, Camus, Zika, and zombies.