Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

A seminar exploring a topic not regularly offered by the department.

COURSE DETAILS:

We often think of “health” as an objective state that can be measured, described, and managed. However, the definition, social use, and experience of health (or non-health) has changed over time, and varies across cultures and spaces. Focusing on different ways of being “outside” of health, that is, being “unwell,” this course will introduce students to the interdisciplinary field of Social Studies in Health and Medicine, which combines historical, literary, and social scientific study of “health”-related phenomenon. This course is designed to help students incrementally build and logically develop solid research and writing skills, including: close reading of theoretical texts; analysis of different academic genres; explanation ad application of key concepts to contemporary problems; systematic use of internet to research contemporary problems.

The course will unfold in four segments:
 
1) Classic works on “unwellness,” including Talcott Parson’s formulation of the “sick role,” Arthur Kleinman’s distinction between “illness” and “disease,” Susan Sontag’s identification of disease metaphors. Additional lectures and readings in history of disease.  

2) Plagues and public health. Apparently, humanity has always been subject to waves of mass disease, even if the understanding and definition of the cause of disease changed. In the mid-20th century, the United Nations created the World Health Organization. In this section, we will explore the history of the WHO and ask how the management of global disease has changed over time, both in relationship to evolving scientific understanding of disease and in relationship to political processes. In particular, we will focus on the construction of entire regions or peoples as “unwell.” Students will identify a specific “global health” issue to research, applying a key term from section 1.  

3) Women’s health. In the 19th century, middle class women were expected to be fragile creatures susceptible to “hysteria,” a mental disorder linked to women’s reproductive capacity. While medicine (supposedly) became scientific in the 20th century, the fields of gynecology and psychiatry both continued to work from implicit ideas about women’s physical and mental inferiority. In the 1970s, the Second Wave feminist movement redefined women as intrinsically healthy, or “well women.” This section we will add elements from social movement theory to understand the role of social movements have played in shaping ideas of “wellness.” Knowledge foundation: social movement theory; history of gender categories; rise of professions.

4) Unwellness topic of choice: Working in small groups, or alone, will follow the procedures used in section 3 to develop a paper on an unwellness topic of their choosing. Students will present their first draft to class for feedback.  

This course uses novels (including graphic novels), ethnographies, and social theory to consider the context in which we experience “sickness and health.” In addition to mastering basic concepts in the history of medicine, the social study of health and illness, and social movement theory, students will have an opportunity to produce both conventional research papers and creative works.

Grading