This course explores the COVID-19 pandemic in global historical perspective, from the Black Death and the Dancing Plague to recurring famines, rounds of imperialism, fascism and populism, the collapse of representative political systems and the accumulation of money, from the emergence of capitalism in the late 15th century till our post-Cold War contemporary. 

We will consider the relations between structures and events, crisis and capitalism, repetition and singularity, as well as human life, death, and need/desire, while paying mind to nature and ecology. We will read and discuss historical and contemporary analyses by, inter alia, Marx, Weber, Giovanni Arrighi, Carlo Ginzburg, Kojin Karatani, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Raymond Brassier, Catherine Malabou, Adam Tooze, Naomi Klein, and William H. Sewell, Jr.