Virus Hunters: Searching the Globe for Infectious Diseases
John Hessler - Thursdays - 10am to 12 noon
Over the last decade, the emergence and spread of zoonotic infectious diseases—those that jump from animals to humans—have become an increasingly urgent concern. Climate change, habitat disruption, and economic instability following wars and natural disasters are reshaping the environments in which pathogens circulate, creating new opportunities for diseases to emerge and spread. From Ebola, SARS, and Dengue to the resurgence of diseases such as plague and the discovery of new fungal and bacterial threats, scientists around the world are working to understand where these pathogens come from, how they evolve, and what their histories can teach us about the future.
This course will introduce students to the fascinating science of virus hunting, exploring how researchers investigate the origins, evolution, and movement of infectious diseases across the globe. Through exciting examples of fieldwork and laboratory research, students will discover how scientists combine genomics, ancient DNA, epidemiology, and other tools to uncover clues about pathogens that may have been circulating for centuries or even thousands of years. We will look at how new technologies are allowing researchers to study the genetic history of viruses and other infectious agents, trace their relationships to one another, and better understand the conditions that allow diseases to emerge.
No science background required. Please note: this instructor will be leading remotely via Zoom.
FOR OUR NATION'S 250TH BIRTHDAY
The American Revolution and the Fate of the World
Richard Bell - Thursdays - 1pm to 3pm
An electrifying global history of a not-so local war.
When we think of the American Revolution, we often picture a parochial drama: thirteen colonies squaring off against the British Crown in a spirited bid for independence. But this version of the story is only half the truth—and perhaps not even the most interesting half. In this riveting fall course, historian and author Richard Bell invites audiences to rediscover the Revolution as a world war that unleashed chaos, opportunity, and transformation across six continents. From the sugar fields of the Caribbean to the court of the King of Mysore, from refugee camps on the Canadian frontier to political uprisings in Sierra Leone and Peru, the war that gave birth to the United States was never simply America’s own. It was a seismic global event that redrew maps, toppled hierarchies, catalyzed migration, and accelerated new movements for liberty—and for empire.
In this course, Bell traces the far-flung reverberations of the war through the lives of the people it displaced, empowered, or destroyed. Participants will encounter a Native matriarch struggling to preserve a transatlantic military alliance, a Prussian officer reinventing himself in a foreign army, and a Boston schoolteacher shipwrecked thousands of miles from home. Along the way, Bell explores how the Revolution stirred a transoceanic refugee crisis, ignited antislavery activism, and inspired uprisings from Ireland to India. The course offers a bold new framework for understanding the Revolutionary War not as a tidy founding moment but as a sprawling, high-stakes struggle fought on land and sea, shaped by commerce, diplomacy, propaganda, and contingency. This is the American Revolution as you’ve never seen it before: complex, global, and astonishingly relevant to the modern world.