Bull Hist Med. 2020;94(4):578-589. doi: 10.1353/bhm.2020.0083.
My essay focuses on Charles Rosenberg's provocative and enduring ideal type of epidemic drama in three acts, which he assembled from a vast knowledge of disease history that stretched from the end of the seventeenth century to his then-present pandemic, HIV/AIDS of the 1980s. Reaching back to the Plague of Athens, my essay elaborates on Rosenberg's dramaturgy by questioning whether blame, division, and collective violence were so universal or even the dominant "acts" of epidemics not only before the nineteenth century but to the present. Instead, with certain pandemics such as yellow fever in the Deep South or the Great Influenza of 1918-20, unity, mass volunteerism, and self-abnegation played leading roles. Finally, not all epidemics ended "with a whimper" as attested by the long early modern history of plague. These often concluded literally with a bang: lavish planning of festivals of thanksgiving, choreographed with processions, innumerable banners, commissions of paintings, ex-voto churches, trumpets, tambourines, artillery fire, and fireworks.
我的文章聚焦于查尔斯·罗森伯格（Charles Rosenberg）从十七世纪末到他所处的艾滋病大流行时代的丰富疾病史知识中提炼出的具有煽动性且持久的三段式传染病戏剧这一理想类型。回溯到雅典瘟疫，我的文章通过质疑指责、分裂和集体暴力是否普遍存在，甚至是否是传染病的主要“行为”，不仅在 19 世纪之前如此，而且一直延续到现在，进一步阐述了罗森伯格的戏剧理论。相反，在某些大流行疾病中，如美国南部的黄热病或 1918-1920 年的大流感，团结、大规模的志愿服务和自我牺牲发挥了主导作用。最后，正如瘟疫的长期早期现代历史所证明的那样，并非所有的传染病都以“悄无声息”结束。这些传染病往往以响亮的方式结束：精心策划感恩节日，游行、无数旗帜、绘画委托、奉献教堂、小号、手鼓、火炮和烟花齐鸣。
