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CCGL9003 Global IssuesContagions: Global Histories of Disease[This course is under the thematic clusters of ‘Sustaining Cities, Cultures, and the Earth’ and ‘The Quest for a Meaningful Life’ / ‘The Universe and the Question of Meaning’.] |
Course Description
How have epidemics shaped the modern world? In what ways has globalization contributed to the spread of disease? And how can historical awareness help us meet the challenges of the present and reconsider the relationship between the local and the global? This course addresses these critical issues from a number of perspectives, mapping the intertwined histories of globalization and infection from fifteenth-century European conquests of the “New World” to the present. The course explores the economic, political and social processes that have contributed to the rise of global epidemics, including: early modern transoceanic exchanges, the slave trade to the Western hemisphere, global conflicts and epidemics, imperial responses to contagion, the rise of global health agencies after WWII, and emergent twenty-first-century animal-to-human infections such as SARS and avian flu in Asia, Europe, the Americas and Africa. Within this broad scope, the course engages with a number of fundamental questions: How and under what conditions did the “unification of the world by disease” come about? What challenges to global security does this infectious interconnectedness pose? What potential might globalization offer in helping to contain epidemics? How, and with what consequences, has the past shaped the way we think about contagious outbreaks today?
Course Learning Outcomes
On completing the course, students will be able to:
- Analyze how epidemics have shaped the modern world.
- Demonstrate an awareness of globalization’s role in facilitating the spread of disease.
- Reflect upon and critically consider the value of historical knowledge in meeting current global health challenges.
- Use a historically-informed approach to critically examine contemporary ideas about contagion.
Offer Semester and Day of Teaching
First semester (Wed)
Study Load
| Activities | Number of hours |
| Lectures | 24 |
| Tutorials | 8 |
| Fieldwork / Visits | 4 |
| Reading / Self-study | 34 |
| Assessment: Essay / Report writing | 30 |
| Assessment: Presentation (incl preparation) | 20 |
| Total: | 120 |
Assessment: 100% coursework
| Assessment Tasks | Weighting |
| Continual assessment and task-focused activities | 35 |
| Online portfolio | 15 |
| Course project | 50 |
Required Reading
Course textbook:
- Peckham, R. (2016). Epidemics in modern Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Extracts from:
- Bashford, A., & Hooker, C. (2001). Contagion: Historical and cultural studies. London: Routledge.
- Crosby, A. W. (2003). The Columbian exchange: Biological and cultural consequences of 1492 (30th anniversary ed.). Westport, CT: Praeger.
- Crossley, P. K. (2008). What is global history? Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity.
- Farmer, P. (1999). Infections and inequalities: The modern plagues. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Garrett, L. (1995). The coming plague: Newly emerging diseases in a world out of balance. New York: Penguin.
- Harrison, M. (2012). Contagion: How commerce has spread disease. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
- Hays, J. N. (1998). The burdens of disease: Epidemics and human response in western history. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
- Honigsbaum, M. (2019). The pandemic century: One hundred years of panic, hysteria and hubris. London: W.W. Norton & Company.
- Le Roy Ladurie, E. (1981). A concept: The unification of the globe by disease. The mind and method of the historian (S. Reynolds & B. Reynolds, Trans.). Brighton: Harvester Press.
- Mazlish, B., & Iriye, A. (2005). The global history reader. New York: Routledge.
- McNeill, W. H. (1976). Plagues and peoples. Oxford: Blackwell.
- Packard, R. M. (2016). A history of global health: Interventions into other people’s lives. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Price-Smith, A. T. (2009). Contagion and chaos: Disease, ecology, and national security in the era of globalization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Rosenberg, C. E. (1992). Explaining epidemics and other studies in the history of medicine. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Wald, P. (2008). Contagious: Cultures, carriers, and the outbreak narrative. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
- Wolfe, N. (2011). The viral storm: The dawn of a new pandemic age. London: Allen Lane.
Course Co-ordinator and Teacher(s)
| Course Co-ordinator | Contact |
| Dr R.Sinha School of Humanities (History), Faculty of Arts |
Tel: 3917 7309 Email: riasinha@hku.hk |
| Teacher(s) | Contact |
| Dr R.Sinha School of Humanities (History), Faculty of Arts |
Tel: 3917 7309 Email: riasinha@hku.hk |