Topic for Fall 2018: Disasters that Made the Americas
This course will explore the ways in which societies reacted to major disasters in the Early Modern Era, such as epidemic disease, earthquakes, and fires. By exploring these remarkable events, we seek to understand how these incidents both shaped, and were shaped by, state power. Colonial legislation, slavery, policing, and city planning will be among the topics we explore. We will consider events on both sides of the Atlantic so that we might understand how disasters and state responses in Europe served as occasional models for cities in the Americas, and those who controlled them. This course will focus primarily on the era between 1492 and 1820, but will consider how these responses might inform decision making in the twenty-first century.