This volume provides a literary-cum-historiographical analysis of epidemics and pandemics. It looks at folklores, tribal folktales, eyewitness accounts, memoirs, and missionary writings from India and the West to explore the history of some of the major outbreaks in history. The chapters focus on the impact of outbreaks such as plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, and COVID-19, upon the material life of people, their social dislocation, and their complex responses to such crises.

The book studies the role of pandemics in pushing scientists, social actors, and litterateurs to develop new paradigms in knowledge generation, theories of environmental dislocation, and the economic slide. It examines themes such as changes in the perception of epidemic diseases across different periods of history, popular responses to state intervention during epidemics, gendering epidemics, as well as the impact of rumours during epidemics.

An important contribution to the social history of health and medicine, the volume will be useful for students and researchers of cultural studies and medical anthropology, public health, literature, history of pandemics and epidemics, sociology of medicine and South Asian studies.

About the Author

Kamlesh Mohan is an Emeritus Professor of modern history at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India.

Saurav Kumar Rai is Research Officer at Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, New Delhi, India.

Book Information
ISBN 9781032892498
Author Kamlesh Mohan
Format Paperback
Page Count 230
Imprint Routledge India
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd