ANT 283 - SPECIAL TOPICS: OF MICROBES & MEN: PLAGUE AND SOCIETY IN MEDIEVAL ITALY

This course is designed to give students the opportunity to study The Plague, by experiencing first-hand where it occurred, and to see the consequences of a pandemic that killed as much as one
half the population of Italy and Europe in less than four years! Students will study descriptions of The Plague, also described as the Black Death, as it was recorded in eyewitness accounts, and will examine its biological, social, economic, political, and cultural consequences through the eyes of modern scholars. By studying what the Plague was, where it occurred, and why it occurred where it did, students gain an understanding of how pandemics have, and continue, to shape the world in which we live. From this geographical perspective student will study how the Black Death provides an important analog to the spread, and potential consequences, of epidemic and emerging
diseases in the modern world.

This course satisfies the information literacy and oral presentation requirements.