Scribner Seminar Program
2005-2006 Titles
Emerging Diseases: Global challenges to human health
Instructor(s): Michael Ennis-McMillan, Anthropology
Description: Recent outbreaks of new and re-emerging diseases, including AIDS, Ebola,
tuberculosis, and cholera, have challenged the ways we think about biological and
social factors that cause human suffering. In this seminar, students approach disease
from several perspectives, integrating public health, environmental studies, and medical
anthropology. We aim to understand the global nature of emerging infectious diseases
and learn about factors affecting how we recognize, control, prevent, and treat these
diseases. Students develop seminar projects that analyze disease outbreaks in various
countries: how does the spread of new diseases relate to social inequality? New medical
technologies? Drug policies? Global climate change? Studying infectious diseases gives
us a powerful example of how methods in medical and social sciences come together
in addressing health problems.
