OSHER 828 - Insights from Outbreaks: Short Stories about People and Pathogens

Epidemics reveal the best and worst of human nature. Yale historian Frank Snowden says they hold up a "mirror" to the social, cultural, and political conditions in which they arise. Short stories about real or imagined contagious conditions teach us, disturb us, and even surprise us. We will learn a lot about epidemics from stories without the risk of living through them. Our teachers include Edgar Alan Poe, H.G. Wells, Katherine Anne Porter, Anton Chekov, and Susan Sontag. Participants will appreciate the impact that serious infectious diseases, outbreaks, and epidemics had and have on individuals, families, and society. While we enjoy and discuss good stories, class members will learn how infectious disease vary by manifestations, morbidity, mortality, routes of transmission, vectors, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.