Sections offered FALL 2020:
#13704 |
EDWARD GUBAR |
MW 4:55-6:25pm |
WEB |
CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd A&H credit; COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit
Above class meets 100% Online with a combination of Synchronous and Asynchronous instruction. For more information visit https://fall2020.iu.edu/learning-modes/
The bubonic plague, TB, leprosy, syphilis, cholera, the 1918 flu, polio, AIDS, Ebola, SARS, etc., and now, COVID-19. Seems like in our history the human race has encountered one epidemic, pandemic, plague, after another. How do we handle these awful experiences? How do germ-free individuals, how do victims, how do societies respond? How have we responded to COVID-19? (You may choose to write about your own ideas and experiences during our course.) In her 1978 essay “Disease as Political Metaphor”, Susan Sontag suggests that epidemic diseases sometimes become viewed as symbols of social disorder, human misbehavior, or evil. She also suggests that responses to diseases often become politicized. She provides some interesting arguments for us to accept or dispute as we read both fiction and nonfiction and view a film or two about individuals and societies responding to a variety of real or fictional diseases.
We will read four Nobel Prize-winning authors: Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain), Albert Camus (The Plague), Jose Saramago (Blindness), and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Love in the Time of Cholera). We will also read books by three multiple prize-winning authors like Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake), Lin Ma (Severance), and Katherine Anne Porter (Pale Horse, Pale Rider), as well as a few texts by popular fiction writers: Michael Crichton (The Andromeda Strain) and Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven).
We will also read a few essays and a few books about previous disease events: John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, about the 1918 great flu, and Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map, about the 1854 cholera epidemic in London. We will also watch the film version of And the Band Played On, about the AIDS epidemic, and perhaps one or two others (to be determined). Films will be available online.
Required work will include several short essays, one long final essay, and a final exam. This will be a seminar class and a significant part of your grade will depend upon your class attendance and participation.