Vaccination in Historical Perspective: Research Seminar

HISTSCI 2410 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Vaccination is among the oldest and most effective of medical interventions, yet paradoxically, it is also one of the most controversial.  This course will examine the history of vaccination specific historical episodes in which it was utilized to prevent illness, disability, and death, as well as associated scientific, social, and political controversies.  Although historians have long chronicled the development of vaccines and allied public health campaigns, the historiography of vaccination has shifted in light of the rapid development of Covid vaccines and the intense debates they have generated.  Following an intensive reading of historical and other social science research on vaccines, each student will select a research topic to investigate during the course.  Together the resulting papers will be included in a “course anthology” of the “new” history of vaccines, utilizing new methodologies and analytic approaches to vaccination in the past and the present.