Peer Review

The electronic textbook provides readers accounts of nine plagues from the Peloponnesian War (around 431 BCE) to the 1917-1918 influenza epidemic. The firsthand accounts offer students insights into how people living and dying in these societies faced these plagues and epidemics.  There are terms included, references, and reflective discussion questions at the end of each chapter.

The selection of the nine plagues/epidemics and the accounts are not sufficiently explained in a systemic approach. There are many more small and big plagues in history and so it is not clear why only these nine were selected.  Moreover, there needs to be a fuller discussion linking plagues, “medical” practice and “religious” (and other related “pre-scientific” as well scientific) ideas, and state intervention as well as the political, economic, and epidemiological contexts for readers to better understand how societies, states, and social groups addressed and managed these plagues/epidemics.

The material provides instructor notes as well as introduction, glossary, and discussion questions for each case. The brief introductions offer contexts to the plague and the reading. The discussion questions emphasize relevance by asking students to make comparisons to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Materials selected are available in the public domain. The inclusion of images such as paintings and pictures offers an added tool for student learning.  There are references and hotlinks in each chapter.

The potential for student learning depends upon how the instructor uses this for discussion purposes.  There is the potential for students sharing their subjective opinions and losing the point of learning from the examples.  Many of the accounts could be more concise in order for students to gain useful insights. Shorter and more varied firsthand accounts for each plague would be better.  The material seems to assume that students already have some “world history” knowledge on societies discussed as well as the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. 

The material is accessed as a google document. The layout of the material is structured as a book (12-point Arial font for the body text) with each case as a book chapter along with color images. Students can easily navigate within each chapter as well as across chapters as needed. As a google document, students can download the materials and change the format to allow them to read the material better, if needed.

The material could be more interactive by hyperlinking keywords in the firsthand account to the glossary and external web sources (as appropriate). Hyperlinking writings by historians and other scholars would enrich student understanding of the debates around each plague as well as making linkages across varying societies and historical events.  Also, highlighting important excerpts (via high-contract colors) would signal students to think and analyze them more substantively.  There are no specific instructions for use. The instructor would need to define how the discussions would be framed from the chapters.