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As a researcher, I’m interested in the political, ecological, and cultural debates around mosquito-borne diseases and the solutions proposed to mitigate them.

When we received the task, my first impulse was to investigate about the contemporary effects of anthropogenic climate change in mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans. But I was afraid to make the same mistake that I did in my PhD research. I wrote my PhD proposal while based in the US, more specifically in New England, during the Zika epidemic, and proposed to understand how scientists were studying ecological climate change and mosquitoes in Brazil. However, once I arrived in the country the political climate was a much more pressing issue, with the dismantling of health and scientific institutions.

Thus, after our meeting yesterday, and Jason Ludwig’s reminder that the theme of our Field Campus is the plantation, I decided to focus on how it related to mosquitoes in New Orleans.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito and the yellow fever virus it can transmit are imbricated in the violent histories of settler-colonialism and slavery that define the plantation economy. The mosquito and the virus arrived in the Americas in the same ships that brought enslaved peoples from Africa. The city of New Orleans had its first yellow fever epidemic in 1796, with frequent epidemics happening between 1817 and 1905. What caused New Orleans to be the “City of the Dead,” as Kristin Gupta has indicated, was yellow fever. However, as historian Urmi Engineer Willoughby points out, the slave trade cannot explain alone the spread and persistance of the disease in the region: "Alterations to the landscape, combined with demographic changes resulting from the rise of sugar production, slavery, and urban growth all contributed to the region’s development as a yellow fever zone." For example, sugar cultivation created ideal conditions for mosquito proliferation because of the extensive landscape alteration and ecological instabilities, including heavy deforestation and the construction of drainage ditches and canals.

Historian Kathryn Olivarius examines how for whites "acclimatization" to the disease played a role in hierarchies with “acclimated” (immune) people at the top and a great mass of “unacclimated” (non-immune) people and how for black enslaved people "who were embodied capital, immunity enhanced the value and safety of that capital for their white owners, strengthening the set of racialized assumptions about the black body bolstering racial slavery."

As I continue to think through these topics, I wonder how both the historical materialities of the plantation and the contemporary anthropogenic changes might be influencing mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans nowadays? And more, how the regions’ histories of race and class might still be shaping the effects of these diseases and how debates about them are framed?

After reading this article I looked further into the ART treatment that was discussed, the mother to child transmission program, and I read more about what Paul Farmer has done in his career. 

"Overall, it is important to understand the perspectives of per- petrators in order to find solutions that enable effective delivery of health services "

"But more significantly, in addition to revealing the reproduction of inequality, the fissures rendered visible by the entry of gender-based violence into humanitarian missions force an engagement with new forms of the political. Humanitarianism’s mission has expanded so that it now occupies a dominant place in the global political arena – whether humanitarians asked for this or not"

"Key challenges in addressing violence affecting health service delivery in complex security environments include a lack of health- specific, accessible and comparable, gender-disaggregated data and sufficient data on perpetrator motives. "

In this article emergency response in addressed in the sense that if preemptive measures are not taken and the socioeconomic factors preventing care are not taken into consideration the United States and the world is at risk of a pandemic. If this occurs, there is uncertainty in what the appropriate response would be as the scale and complexities of the biological agent will be unknown. 

Scott Knowles is a professor and the head of the Department of History Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Drexel University. His work specifically focuses on risk and disaster, with particular interests in modern cities, technology, and public policy. Knowles has recently released a book addressing the risks and disasters in modern America. 

This article primarily discusses the mental illnesses associated with disasters whether they be natural or instigated by humans. The article looks at mental illnesses themselves, such as PTSD, MDD, and substance abuse, and also the groups at risk for these mental illnesses. The article also breaks down the factors pre, peri, and post the disaster that can contribute to mental illness of victims, and what emergency response providers can do/provide in order to reduce these risks of mental illness. 

The argument/narrative is made and sustained by the use of Sgt. Ensminger's back story and the stories of other Marine's and their families. The film includes interviews with chemist who tested the base's water supply in the 1980's, Senate and House committee meetings, testimony from USMC Colonel, and current chemical investigations at military bases.