Department of English

In this course we will explore literary and filmic representations of contagious disease from the eighteenth century to the present day. Plague narratives abound in literary history and have long been the means by which the body and its boundaries have been interrogated, as well as the space where social structures and the very definition of the human might be (re)imagined.  In our exploration of texts like Bram Stoker's Dracula, Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, and Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, we will explore disease's relationship with and representation through language and consider their the social, cultural, and political implications.