AHIS 25A15 - Epidemics and planetary health. History, ecology, politics

This course is an introduction to the history of epidemics on the longue durée (from the Neolithics to neoliberal 21st century. It adopts an original angle: the perspective of planetary health, a recently emerged framework that proposes to address the interplay between health and disease, local environments and the planetary crisis. Our aim is engage simultaneously with the history of medicine (including the legacies of Hippocratic and medieval theories of epidemics), with global history (trade, war, colonialism and international governance) and with environmental history (emergence of pathogens, ecological transformation, multi-species histories, Anthropocene studies). Exploring examples including cholera, plague, Covid-19, HIV-AIDS, we will explore how epidemics are embedded within wider pathogenic ecologies shaped by political structures, planetary change and human (in)action and ignorance. To do so, will follow a “place-based” approached, which allows to avoid the repetitive and sometimes stereotypical genre of epidemic narratives. This year, in the collective group work we will focus on the Greater Paris as a region marked by the experience of epidemics and epidemic control.

Benedetta LANA,Guillaume LACHENAL

Cours magistral seul

English

The course does not require a previous training in biosciences or any health-related field, environmental studies, data science, or history of science and medicine. However, students are expected to be curious about these questions. Similarly, the use of French is not necessary for the reading and the writing of the exam and papers, but students are supposed to be willing to engage with the French context and history.

Autumn 2023-2024

Group work (50%): preparation of a case study for the collaborative “Historical Atlas of Planetary Health in the Greater Paris Area” (deliverable: visuals, data/graphs and text for a double atlas page), on a topic determined with the professor and the TA. Individual "table exam" (40%): (24-hours home exam): written analysis of an article/document guided by questions Participation (10%) (Q&A in class and small written commentaries on the syllabus readings)