Description
The course will familiarize students with paradigms and analytical tools used by historians, economists, and anthropologists to make sense of famine and other natural catastrophes. These tools will then be applied to famines and social crises in a variety of historical settings. Case studies will include the Irish Potato Famine, British colonial famines and epidemics in India, the American Dust Bowl, the Soviet famines, and the Great Leap Famine in China. Students will explore the political, social, cultural, and ethical dimensions of these crises. The primary emphasis will be on famine; however, many of the theories encountered in the course can be applied to crisis and calamity in general. Students will complete a scholarly research paper on a famine or social crisis of their choice and present their findings to their classmates.