HU929-7-SP-CO:
Plagues, Pandemics, and Panics
PLEASE NOTE: This module is inactive. Visit the Module Directory to view modules and variants offered during the current academic year.
2023/24
Human Rights Centre (Essex Law School)
Colchester Campus
Spring
Postgraduate: Level 7
Inactive
Monday 15 January 2024
Friday 22 March 2024
15
01 March 2022
Requisites for this module
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This module provides a multi-disciplinary and contextual understanding of how the international community, states, and communities respond to pandemics and similar public health emergencies by drawing on expertise across seven departments at Essex: Government, Health & Social Care, History, Law, LIFTS, Philosophy & Art History, and Sociology.
The module aims to:
1. introduce students to how plagues, pandemics, epidemics, and other public health emergencies disproportionately affect vulnerable populations
2. provide students with a solid understanding of how public health emergencies impact policies, practices and institutions at the international, national, and local levels
3. enable students to apply international human rights law and ethical norms to critique state responses to public health emergencies
4. give students an overview of different disciplinary perspectives on public health emergencies
Upon successful completion of the module students will able to:
1. demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the political, social, economic, cultural, and legal effects of public health emergencies
2. demonstrate knowledge and understanding of diverse political, legal, ethical, and cultural responses to public health emergencies
3. critically assess how human rights theory, law, practice, and institutions have performed during public health emergencies, especially the COVID-19 pandemic
4. critically evaluate the extent to which there can be effective rights-based approaches to public health emergencies
Indicative Schedule
1. Plagues, Pandemics, and Panics
2. Public Health, Global Health, and the Right to Health
3. From Disaster Triage to Rights-Based Ethics
4. Mental Health
5. Vulnerability, Inequality, and Discrimination
6. Lockdowns and Lockups: States of Exception and Emergency Powers
7. Tracing and Tracking: The Uses and Abuses of Big Data and Tech Companies
8. "Let the Bodies Pile Up": Accountability for Mass Death
9. Art, Mourning, and Repair
The module will be taught through academic staff providing short lectures via recorded video (totaling 60 minutes) plus 1 live/recorded webinar (60 minutes) per week along with discussion on the Moodle forum.
This module does not appear to have a published bibliography for this year.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
| Coursework / exam |
Description |
Deadline |
Coursework weighting |
Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Yes
Yes
Yes
No external examiner information available for this module.
Available via Moodle
No lecture recording information available for this module.
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