Eric D. Carter

My interdisciplinary research lies at the nexus between medical geography, political ecology, and the history of public health, with a regional focus on Latin America. Main areas of research interest include the political ecology of infectious and vector-borne diseases; environmental and social history of disease control; social medicine and public health in Latin America; and the biopolitics of public health interventions.

My first book, Enemy in the Blood: Malaria, Environment, and Development in Argentina (2012), received the Elinor Melville Prize for best book in Latin American Environmental History from the Conference on Latin American History. My second book, In Pursuit of Health Equity: A History of Latin American Social Medicine (2023) is the result of seven years of research, mainly in Argentina, Chile, and Costa Rica, supported by fellowships from the US Fulbright Scholar Program and the American Council of Learned Societies.

I hold a Bachelor’s degree in History from the University of California, Berkeley (1994), and a Master’s (1999) and PhD (2005) in Geography from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I joined the Macalester faculty in 2012.

You can learn more about me, including my research profile and class projects, on my personal webpage here. Or check out my Google Scholar profile.

Courses

GEOG 249: Environment and Society in Latin America

GEOG 256: Health Geography

GEOG 258: Geography of Environmental Hazards

GEOG 368: Health GIS

GEOG 475: Health Geography Seminar

Links for Geography course syllabi can be found on our Course Syllabi page.