Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters: Reflections of Political Theory from Antiquity to the Age of COVID
Edited by Lee Trepanier
JMC faculty partner Lee Trepanier has recently edited a collection of pieces on political theory and its relation to disease and disaster. Several JMC scholars served as contributors, including Jeremiah H. Russell, Michael E. Promisel, Kevin Kearns, Evan Lowe, Benjamin Isaak Gross, Richard Avramenko, Erin Dolgoy and Kimberly Hurd Hale:
This book examines diseases and disasters from the perspective of social and political theory, exploring the ways in which political leaders, social activists, historians, philosophers, and writers have tried to make sense of the catastrophes that have plagued humankind from Thucydides to the present COVID pandemic. By adopting the perspective of political theory, it sheds light on what these individuals and events can teach us about politics, society, and human nature, as well as the insights and limitations of political theory. Including thinkers such as Thucydides, Sophocles, Augustine, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Publius, Bartolomé de las Casas, Jane Addams, Camus, Saramago, Baudrillard, Weber, Schmitt, Voegelin and Agamben, it considers a diverse range of events including the plagues of Byzantium and 14th century Europe, 9/11, the hurricanes of Fukushima, Boxing Day, and New Orleans, and the current COVID pandemic. An examination of past, present, and future diseases and disasters, and the ways in which individuals and societies react to them, this volume will appeal to scholars of politics, sociology, anthropology and philosophy with interests in disaster and the social body.
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Lee Trepanier is the Chair and Professor of Political Science at Samford University and editor of VoegelinView and Lexington Books series Politics, Literature, and Film. Additionally, he is the author and editor of more than 20 books, including The College Lecture Today: An Interdisciplinary Defense for the Contemporary University and Eric Voegelin’s Asian Political Thought. His scholarly interests include political philosopher Eric Voegelin, Politics and Literature, Religion and Politics, Democracy and Education, and Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
Professor Trepanier is a JMC faculty partner.
Learn more about Lee Trepanier >>
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