This course examines written and visual accounts of contagious diseases and of disease control in Latin America. We will depart from nineteenth century shifts in the discourses of tropical medicine brought about by the microbiological revolution and their implications for the imperial prospects of capitalist expansion in Latin America, and finish with art production in the context of Zika, dengue, and COVID-19. Topics of study include fever as an aesthetic device; cinema and hygiene; the (in)visibility of contaminants; infrastructure, deforestation and disease ecologies; nation building and the racialized fear of the contagious body; DDT contamination, and virus and globalization. Using materials as varied as literary novels, drawings, newspaper chronicles, and photographs, we will build a critical vocabulary that will guide us through the ruptures and continuities between current and past disease stories. Course taught in English.