High-tech science it has placed the archetypically medieval diseases of plague and leprosy at the forefront of new methods to investigate the major diseases that have afflicted humans on every inhabited continent, in every period of human existence. Not simply plague and leprosy, but also tuberculosis, malaria, smallpox, syphilis, cholera, and even the most recent global scourge, HIV/AIDS, can all now be investigated historically by combining the disciplinary perspectives of molecular genetics, bioarcheology, and documentary-based historical analysis. But “history” itself needs to be defined now on a larger scale, one that can encompass the vast chronological depths of evolutionary time and the massive geographic breadths of human migrations around the world.

This talk will recount Dr. Green's personal journey in moving into and across these different fields over the course of the past decade, and my growing realization that it is indeed possible and also opportune to create a single interpretative framework for a global history of health.

Monica H. Green, is the World History Center's Visiting Scholar for 2013-2014