HLTH 17000
Introduction to Health and Society
Eugene Raikhel / T Th 11–12:20

Disability, experiences of illness, categories of disorder, ideals of well-being, and models of medical intervention can all vary between cultural settings and across history. Rapid changes in medicine and biotechnology create new understandings and expectations about illness, health, and well-being. At the same time, inequalities in access to care and in health outcomes across populations, in the United States and globally, have become important to conversations in policy and practice alike. This course introduces students introduces students to the social, political, and economic processes that shape individual and population health, as well as to a range of concepts and methods which social scientists use to study these processes. A requirement for students undertaking the “Health and Society” minor, the class will also serve as an introduction to the faculty researching and teaching on issues of health and society in the Social Sciences Division and beyond.

BPRO 22800 (HLTH 25310)
Drinking Alcohol: Social Problem or Normal Cultural Practice?
Michael Dietler, W Green / T TH 2–3:20
Alcohol is the most widely used psychoactive agent in the world, and, as archaeologists have recently demonstrated, it has a very long history dating back at least 9,000 years. This course will explore the issue of alcohol and drinking from a trans-disciplinary perspective. It will be co-taught by an anthropologist/archaeologist with experience in alcohol research and a neurobiologist who has experience with addiction research. Students will be confronted with literature on alcohol research from anthropology, sociology, history, biology, medicine, psychology, and public health and asked to think through the conflicts and contradictions. Selected case studies will be used to focus the discussion of broader theoretical concepts and competing perspectives introduced in the first part of the course. Topics for lectures and discussion include: fermentation and the chemistry and pharmacology of alcohol; the early history of alcohol; histories of drinking in ancient, medieval, and modern times; alcohol and the political economy; alcohol as a cultural artifact; styles of drinking and intoxication; how is alcohol metabolized; addiction; how does alcohol affect sensations; social problems; alcohol and religion; alcohol and health benefits; comparative case studies of drinking.

BPRO 28300 (HLTH 28301)
Disability and Design
Michelle Ilana Friedner, Jennifer Iverson / T Th 9:30–10:50
Disability is often an afterthought, an unexpected tragedy to be mitigated, accommodated, or overcome. In cultural, political, and educational spheres, disabilities are non-normative, marginal, even invisible. This runs counter to many of our lived experiences of difference where, in fact, disabilities of all kinds are the “new normal.” In this interdisciplinary course, we center both the category and experience of disability. Moreover, we consider the stakes of explicitly designing for different kinds of bodies and minds. Rather than approaching disability as a problem to be accommodated, we consider the affordances that disability offers for design.
This course begins by situating us in the growing discipline of Disability Studies and the activist (and intersectional) Disability Justice movement. We then move to four two-week units in specific areas where disability meets design: architecture, infrastructure, and public space; education and the classroom; economics, employment, and public policy; and aesthetics. Traversing from architecture to art, and from education to economic policy, this course asks how we can design for access.

CCTS 20400 (HLTH 20400)
Health Disparities in Breast Cancer
E. Dolan / M W 3–4:20
Across the globe, breast cancer is the most common women’s cancer. In the last two decades, there have been significant advances in breast cancer detection and treatment that have resulted in improved survival rates. Yet, not all populations have benefited equally from these improvements, and there continues to be a disproportionate burden of breast cancer felt by different populations. In the U.S., for example, white women have the highest incidence of breast cancer but African-American women have the highest breast cancer mortality overall. The socioeconomic, environmental, biological, and cultural factors that collectively contribute to these disparities are being identified with a growing emphasis on health disparities research efforts. In this 10-week discussion-based course students will meet twice weekly and cover major aspects of breast cancer disparities.

CHDV 20100 (HLTH 20100)
Human Development Research Design
Chiara Galli / W F 1:30–2:50 (sections vary)
The purpose of this course is to expose CHD majors in college to a broad range of methods in social sciences with a focus on human development research. The faculty in Comparative Human Development is engaged in interdisciplinary research encompassing anthropology, biology, psychology, sociology, and applied statistics. The types of data and methods used by faculty span the gamut of possible methodologies for addressing novel and important research questions. In this course, students will study how appropriate research methods are chosen and employed in influential research and will gain hands-on experience with data collection and data analysis. In general, the class will meet as a whole on Mondays and will have lab/discussion sections on Wednesdays. The lab/discussion sections are designed to review the key concepts, practice through applying some of the methods, and prepare students for the assignments. Students in each section will be assigned to small groups. Some of the assignments are group-based while others are individual-based.

CHSS 32000 (HLTH 22001)
Introduction to Science Studies
Michael Rossi / W 9:30–12:20
Description: This course explores the interdisciplinary study of science as an enterprise. During the twentieth century, sociologists, historians, philosophers, and anthropologists all raised interesting and consequential questions about the sciences. Taken together their various approaches came to constitute a field, “science studies.” The course provides an introduction to this field. Students will not only investigate how the field coalesced and why, but will also apply science-studies perspectives in a fieldwork project focused on a science or science-policy setting. Among the topics we may examine are the sociology of scientific knowledge and its applications, actor-network theories of science, constructivism and the history of science, images of normal and revolutionary science, accounts of research in the commercial university, and the examined links between science and policy.

GNSE 12103 (HLTH 12103)
Treating Trans-: Practices of Medicine, Practices of Theory
Paula Martin / T TH 11–12:20
Medical disciplines from psychiatry to surgery have all attempted to identify and to treat gendered misalignment, while queer theory and feminisms have simultaneously tried to understand if and how trans- theories should be integrated into their respective intellectual projects. This course looks at the logics of the medical treatment of transgender (and trans- more broadly) in order to consider the mutual entanglement of clinical processes with theoretical ones. Over the quarter we will read ethnographic accounts and theoretical essays, listen to oral histories, discuss the intersections of race and ability with gender, and interrogate concepts like “material bodies” and “objective science”. Primary course questions include: (1) How is “trans-” conceptualized, experienced, and lived? How has trans-studies distinguished itself from feminisms and queer theories? (2) What are the objects, processes, and problematics trans-medicine identifies and treats? How is “trans-” understood and operationalized through medical practices? (3) What meanings of health, power, knowledge, gender, and the body are utilized or defined by our authors? What relations can we draw between them?

HLTH 24002 (GNSE 24003, CRES 24525, HIPS 24002)
Mind, Brain, and Mental Health
Virginia Rangos / M W 1:30–2:50
This course will approach the medicalization of mental healthcare, through an intersectional lens, with particular attention to how diagnosis and treatment are gendered and racialized. Topics will include: the construction of diagnostic categories and the process of medicalization and de-medicalization (e.g. of addiction, sexual behavior and identity, etc.); stigma and disability activism; and experiencing and conceptualizing an injured or ill brain/mind. Course material will focus on the United States, with international case comparisons.

HLTH 24003 (HIPS 24003; RLST 24003; SOCI 20582)
Death and Dying
Alex Tate / T Th 9:30–10:50
Death happens to everyone. However, dying is as much a social process as an individual one. The factors that impact how, when and where people die, and how societies handle death and dying, are shaped by the structural and cultural forces in our world. These range from economic, geographic, and religious forces to the institutional politics of health care systems. The sociology of death and dying is the systematic study of the structure of the human response to death, dying, and bereavement in their socio-cultural, interpersonal, and individual contexts. Often conceptualized as a discrete event, death is a process that is shaped over the life course. In this course, we will analyze the socio-demographic patterns of death, the factors that shape the process of dying, the economics of dying, and the ways that individuals and groups respond to death. We will also consider the social factors that shape a “good death” and discuss current policies and debates surrounding end-of-life care and aid-in-dying.

HMRT 21400 (HLTH 21400)
Health and Human Rights
Evan Lyon; Renslow Sherer / T Th 9:30–10:50
This course attempts to define health and health care in the context of human rights theory and practice. Does a “right to health” include a “right to health care”? We delineate health care financing in the United States and compare these systems with those of other nations. We explore specific issues of health and medical practice as they interface in areas of global conflict: torture, landmines, and poverty. Readings and discussions explore social determinants of health: housing, educational institutions, employment, and the fraying of social safety nets. We study vulnerable populations: foster children, refugees, and the mentally ill. Lastly, does a right to health include a right to pharmaceuticals? What does the big business of drug research and marketing mean for our own country and the world?

PBHS 24700
Community Health Promotion
Jasmin Tiro / T Th 3:30–4:50
A person’s health depends not only their genes or behavior, but also where they live, learn, work, play, and age. This course examines how social and community structures and policies influence health and can produce health disparities. Structural issues (e.g., economic stability, housing, food security, health care access and quality, broadband access, health and digital literacy, violence, discrimination) are key social determinants of health. This course will describe and apply: 1) frameworks for understanding health determinants acting at multiple levels, and 2) community and structural intervention approaches to promote health. Students will learn how to prioritize among health determinants and select among intervention approaches to solve public health problems and improve public health practice.

PBHS 38010 (HLTH 28010)
Economic Analysis of Health Policies
Betsy Cliff / M W 1:30–2:50
This course covers the foundations of the economics of health care as applied to current issues of health care policy. Content includes demand for health, medical care, and insurance; supply of medical care and behavior of health care practitioners; and economic perspectives on measurement in health care research. Using a combination of lectures, readings, problem sets, and discussion of newspaper and journal articles, the goal is for students to acquire a basic understanding of economic knowledge and thinking and to be able to apply that knowledge in analyzing policies. The course is open to graduate students and a limited number of undergraduates. A prior course in microeconomics is recommended; for those students without this preparation, the beginning of the course will include a short primer on key concepts in microeconomics.

HLTH 17000
Introduction to Health and Society
Virginia Rangos / M W 1:30-2:50PM
Disability, experiences of illness, categories of disorder, ideals of well-being, and models of medical intervention can all vary between cultural settings and across history. Rapid changes in medicine and biotechnology create new understandings and expectations about illness, health, and well-being. At the same time, inequalities in access to care and in health outcomes across populations, in the United States and globally, have become important to conversations in policy and practice alike. This course introduces students introduces students to the social, political, and economic processes that shape individual and population health, as well as to a range of concepts and methods which social scientists use to study these processes. A requirement for students undertaking the “Health and Society” minor, the class will also serve as an introduction to the faculty researching and teaching on issues of health and society in the Social Sciences Division and beyond.

BPRO 22700 (HLTH 22700)
Abortion: Morality, Politics, Philosophy
Jason Bridges, Dan Brudney / M W 12:30-3:20PM (Friday Sections)
Abortion is a complex and fraught topic. Morally, a very wide range of individual, familial, and social concerns converge upon it. Politically, longstanding controversies have been given new salience and urgency by the Dobbs decision and the ongoing moves by state legislatures to restrict access to abortion. In terms of moral philosophy, deep issues in ethics merge with equally deep questions about the nature of life, action, and the body. In terms of political philosophy, basic questions are raised about the relationship of religious and moral beliefs to the criminal law of a liberal state. We will seek to understand the topic in all of this complexity. Our approach will be thoroughly intra- and inter-disciplinary, drawing not only on philosophy but also on the contributions of a series of guest instructors in law, history, and medicine.

*CHDV 20000 (HLTH 20000, PSYC 20850)
Introduction to Human Development
Sevda Numanbayraktaroglu / M W 1:30-2:50PM (Friday Sections)
This course introduces the study of lives in context. The nature of human development from infancy through old age is explored through theory and empirical findings from various disciplines. Readings and discussions emphasize the interrelations of biological, psychological, and sociocultural forces at different points of the life cycle.

CHDV 24599 (HLTH 24599, CRES 24599, PBPL 24599)
Historical and Contemporary Issues in US Racial Health Inequality
Micere Keels / M 9:30-12:20PM
This course explores persistent health inequality in the U.S. from the 1900s to the present day. The focus will be on racial gaps in urban health inequality with some discussion of rural communities. Readings will largely cover the research on Black and White gaps in health inequality, with the understanding that most of the issues discussed extend to health inequalities across many racial and ethnic groups. Readings cover the broad range of social determinants of health (socioeconomic status, education, access to health care, homelessness) and how these social determinants are rooted in longstanding legacies of American inequality. A major component of class assignments will be identifying emerging research and innovative policies and programs that point to promising pathways to eliminating health disparities.

ENGL 10116
Medicine in British Popular Culture
Heather Glenny
This course looks at the entanglements of medicine and performance in England across two sites of analysis: the performance stage and the anatomical theater. We’ll begin with Shakespeare and his contemporaries alongside the history of public dissections in London, looking at issues of fear, education, entertainment, public opinion, punishment, and the State. Whose bodies were dissected for education and spectacle, and who watched? Moving into the 18th and 19th centuries, we’ll examine how British literature and theater present Western medicine as benevolent, progressive, and corrective over “unfamiliar” modes of healing in the colonies. How do performances stage imperialism’s anxieties over disease, contamination, pathology, and non-Western medicine? We’ll develop tropes and archetypes to track the quack doctor in comedy and satire, the vengeful physician in horror and drama, and the medical monstrosity in both science and mass entertainment as they persist into the 21st-century. Students will pursue independent projects that critically analyze a medical moment, broadly understood, in literary, stage, or film performance, or the inverse, a performance moment in the medical world. (1830-1990, Theory)

GNSE 12123
Global Perspectives on Reproductive Justice Theory and Practice
Malavika Parthasarathy / M W 3-4:20PM
The US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has sharpened our awareness of the perils that besiege our reproductive futures. This course offers a deep dive into comparative reproductive justice theory and practice rooted both in unique cultural particularities and in globally resonant issues and challenges. While exposing students to the foundational texts shaping the reproductive justice movement, the course shall engage critically with the possibilities and limitations of a rights based framework and the challenges and liberatory potential of a justice based approach to reproductive decision-making. Drawing from literature and media from across the world, the course shall provide global perspectives on issues as varied as contraception, assisted reproductive technology, mass sterilization, and family leave, along with scholarship and resources from the US. While engaging critically with theory, the course shall also provide practitioners’ perspectives through guest lectures by ethnographers, lawyers, and healthcare professionals working in the field. This course counts as a Foundations course for GNSE majors.

HIST 20111 (HLTH 20111, CRES 20111, GNSE 20111, RLST 20111)
History of Death
Katie Hickerson / T Th 2:00-3:20PM
This course introduces students to the historical study of death and the methods and approaches scholars have developed to understand the roles death has played in shaping societies across time and space. Drawing from the rich scholarship on the history of death, it will demonstrate the methodical diversity (textual, visual, and material culture studies) and analytical approaches (history of the body, religious studies, and the study of slavery and colonialism) used to examine the multivalent ways the dead have been sources of meaning-making for individuals, institutions, religious communities, and nations from early Islam to the aftermath of the Vietnam War. It examines how ruptures in ways of death through military encounters, epidemics, and colonialism have shaped and transformed societies. While the history of death is strongly situated in narratives of the rise of the West, students will consider case studies from across regional scholarly specializations, including Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia.

HIST 27720
Disability in American History
Madeline Williams / T Th 11-12:20
This course explores disability as a crucial aspect of power and identity in modern American history. Over the course of that history, legal, medical, economic, environmental, and cultural structures have been elaborated which render some people’s bodies and minds as disabled. Furthermore, debilitating and maiming forces have produced impairment in the bodies and minds of groups and individuals in unequal ways. In this course we consider some of these disabling structures and debilitating forces. Through applying a disability lens, we will explore the complex relationships between disability and race, gender, class, and sexuality in United States politics and life. Alongside our inquiry into structural, systemic, and attitudinal forms of ableism in historical context, we will learn how disabled people and their allies have challenged powerful forces throughout U.S history. Such challenges have included demands for rights and recognition to mutual aid to rejections of ableism’s hierarchies and exclusions through building kin, forming communities, tinkering, and claiming identities. Students engage disability’s rich history through primary sources, scholarly texts, films, images, and other cultural products.

KNOW 36080 (HLTH 26080)
Technologies of the Body
Melanie Jeske / T 1:30-4:20PM
From models and measures to imaging technologies and genomic sequencing, technologies have profoundly shaped how we know and understand human bodies, health, and disease. Drawing on foundational and contemporary science and technology studies scholarship, this class will interrogate technologies of the body: how they are made, the ways in which they have changed understandings of the human condition, their impact on individual and collective identities, and the interests and values built into their very design. Course readings will examine how technologies render bodies knowable and also construct them in particular ways. We will also focus on how technologies incorporate, and reinforce, ideas about human difference. Students will conduct an independent, quarter-long research project analyzing a biomedical technology of their choice. By the end of this course, students will be able to identify and explain the social, political and economic factors that shape the design and production of biomedical technologies, as well as the impact of these technologies on biomedicine and the social world more broadly. This course provides students with an opportunity to conduct a quarter-long research project, using a biomedical technology as a case study. Students will be introduced to foundational and cutting-edge scholarship in science and technology studies, and will use this scholarship to conduct their independent research.

PBHS 30910 (HLTH 20910, PPHA 36410, ENST 27400, STAT 22810)
Epidemiology and Population Health
Diane Lauderdale / T TH 3:30-4:50PM (Friday Sections)
Epidemiology is the basic science of public health. It is the study of how diseases are distributed across populations and how one designs population-based studies to learn about disease causes, with the object of identifying preventive strategies. Epidemiology is a quantitative field and draws on biostatistical methods. Historically, epidemiology’s roots were in the investigation of infectious disease outbreaks and epidemics. Since the mid-twentieth century, the scope of epidemiologic investigations has expanded to a fuller range non-infectious diseases and health problems. This course will introduce classic studies, study designs and analytic methods, with a focus on global health problems. PQ: STAT 22000 or other introductory statistics highly desirable. For BIOS students-completion of the first three quarters of a Biological Sciences Fundamentals sequence.

PBHS 31450 (HTLH  27450, CRES 27450)
Social Inequalities in Health: Race/Ethnicity & Class
Aresha Martinez-Cardoso / M 1:30-4:20PM
This course examines how social stratification and social inequality shape racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities in health. In particular, we will explore the production of race and class inequality in the US and draw on the extant theoretical and empirical literature to understand how these social factors influence health behaviors and health outcomes. Finally, we will review both the classic and emerging methodological approaches used by public health and social scientists to measure and test how these features of society get “under the skin” to shape a variety of health outcomes.

PBHS 35500 (HLTH 25500, PBPL 25500, SSAD 45011, PPHA 37720)
Introduction to US Health Policy and Politics
Loren Saulsberry / T Th 12:30-1:50PM
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the concepts needed to critically evaluate U.S. health policy issues. The course will 1) provide an overview of the U.S. health system including its institutions, stakeholders, and financing mechanisms, 2) describe the politics of health and illuminate how the structure of our political system shapes health policy outcomes, and 3) offer a framework for assessing the critical features central to health policy debates. Building upon this knowledge, the course will conclude with a discussion of strategies for influencing the health policy process and how they might be employed in future leadership roles within the health sector.

PBHS 35600 (HLTH 25600)
Money, Medicine, and Markets: The Financialization of the US Health System
Joe Bruch / T-TH 12:30-1:50PM
This class tracks the complex ways capital influences health and health care delivery in the United States, with extensions to other national contexts. Broadly, this course is designed to provide students with the tools to identify and examine the nature of capital in shaping the health of Americans and is divided into 3 Parts. In Part 1, we will review the macro changes in health care delivery in the US over the past century, with readings focusing on financialization and its application to health care privatization and consolidation. In Part 2, the course visits different topics of health care where tensions between profit maximization, health care quality, and health equity are most visible. These topics include nonprofit vs. for-profit actors, private-public partnerships, the pharmaceutical industry, private equity activity, the insurance industry, physician entrepreneurs, management consultants, and the women’s health industry. In Part 3, using concepts from political economy and epidemiology, we will grapple with embodiment and the link between capitalism and population health through financial lending, macroeconomic conditions, economic inequality, and the commercial determinants of health. This course will introduce students to cutting-edge scholarship across a range of fields, including health economics, public health, sociology, and political science.

PPHA 37820 (ECON 17710; PBPL 28335)
Health Care Markets and Regulation
Joshua Gottlieb / T Th 9:30-10:50AM
This course analyzes the economics of health care markets and the way regulations impact those markets. We will study the unique institutional arrangements found in the health care sector (primarily, though not exclusively, in the United States) and examine how market forces manifest themselves in this setting. We will consider the behavior of health care providers, insurers’ roles both as intermediaries and risk managers, patients’ health care demand, and geographic differences in medicine. The study of government regulations, including their theoretical and empirical impacts on health care markets, will be integrated throughout these topics.

PSYC 22350 (HLTH 22350)
Social Neuroscience
Jean Decety/ T TH 9:30-10:50AM
Social species, by definition, create emergent organizations beyond the individual—structures ranging from dyads and families to groups and cultures. Social neuroscience is the interdisciplinary field devoted to the study of neural, hormonal, cellular, and genetic mechanisms, and to the study of the associations and influences between social and biological levels of organization. The course provides a valuable interdisciplinary framework for students in psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, and comparative human development. Many aspects of social cognition will be examined, including but not limited to attachment, attraction, altruism, contagion, cooperation, competition, dominance, empathy, isolation, morality, and social decision-making.

RLST 26313 (HLTH 26313)
Judaism, Medicine, and the Body
Ranana Dine / T TH 9:30-10:50AM
For centuries the “Jewish doctor” has existed as an archetype, but is there such a thing as Jewish medicine? Does Judaism teach a distinct approach to the body, illness, and healing? And more significantly, why should religion have anything to do with one’s health today? In this course we will grapple with our assumptions regarding modern Western medicine by discussing topics in Jewish medical thought and ethics. We will study how Judaism – its texts, history, laws, and traditions – intersect with issues of science, medicine, and the body. In particular we will think about how a Jewish approach to medicine, and more broadly a religious approach, might complicate contemporary assumptions about the body and healing. We will also consider how Jewish bodies have been imagined and stereotyped, and think about how that might affect Jewish approaches to disease and medical ethics. This course will thus offer students a way to think about alternatives to assumptions about medicine, the body, and ethics in the secular West, which will be explored both in class materials and in personal projects. No prior work in Jewish studies, medical ethics, or religious studies necessary.