Global Arc

This course explores how gender is integral to constructions of health and illness. How do techniques of knowledge production in law, biomedicine, and public health rely on and invent ideas about gender difference? How is gender embodied in individual and collective experiences of suffering and affliction? How are such bodily experiences cross-cut by other conditions of social life, such as; culture, race, class, ethnicity, nationality and migration? The course combines readings in anthropology, literature, women¿s and gender studies, and critical theory to explore these questions in the contemporary context of the United States.

Why are people committed to the "Paleo" diet in the 21st Century? Why do we apply the title "comfort" to certain foods? This class will use anthropology as a platform to explore how diverse health outcomes are connected to the foods we do (and do not) eat. While we will consider how food is implicated in individual health outcomes (such as malnutrition and chronic disease), we will also explore food and diet at an evolutionary scale. Shaping these explorations will be a sharp critical lens that considers how culture shapes our perceptions of food and health and how power intersects in our ability to so access those needs and preferences.

This seminar provides a practical and theoretical toolkit for students interested in health disparities and social change. We will consider how critical perspectives on health, violence and the environment can create the grounds for broader social change. Through a multidisciplinary focus, we will look at how social change is conceptualized and assessed by experts, beneficiaries, and critics. Drawing lessons from the ACT UP, Black Lives Matter, reproductive rights and #MeToo, for example, we will examine how individuals and groups use technology and organize to change the status quo, reimagining ideas of justice and equity from the ground up.

This seminar explores how reproductive technologies are involved in the government of biological and social life. Through readings in medical anthropology, critical social theory, and science and technology studies we will consider how reproductive technologies (both contraceptive and procreative) shape understandings of the body, personhood, modernity and nature, and how practices of biological reproduction are entangled with the social reproduction of race, class, gender, and ethnicity. Ethnographic studies include hormonal contraception, assisted conception, abortion, sterilization, stem cell science, adoption, and prenatal screening.

Introduces disease and healthcare problems worldwide and examines efforts to address them. Via an interdisciplinary approach, identifies the main actors, institutions, knowledge, and values at play in the "global health system", and explores the environmental, social, political, and economic factors that shape patterns and variations in disease and health across societies. Topics include: development and governance of disease; technological change and public health; human rights and social justice; measuring health outcomes; and the shifting role of states, civil society, and public-private partnerships in healthcare delivery. Two lectures.

Focuses on the distribution and determinants of disease. Diverse methodological approaches for measuring health status, disease occurrence, and the association between risk factors and health outcomes will be presented via classic and contemporary studies of chronic and infectious illness and disease outbreaks. Emphasis on: causal inference, study design and sampling, bias and confounding, the generalizability of research, health policy and research ethics. Prerequisite: an approved basic statistics course. Two 90-minute lectures, one preceptorial.

This course will examine four major topics in global health. Each topic will span two or three class meetings. The first session on a topic will feature a presentation by an expert invited from outside the University. Following the expert presentation, student discussants will lead a question/answer/commentary period. During the second and third class meetings for each topic, students will explore elements of the expert's presentation in greater depth as well as additional aspects relating to the topic of discussion. The student presentations will each be followed by student discussants.

This seminar will examine the contemporary phenomenon of "global health" in Africa against the history and politics of health and healing. Topics include; colonial efforts to regulate race, gender, sexuality, and labor; African's responses to colonialism and missionization; the impact of colonialism on experience of health and healing; the training of African practitioners of biomedicine; the significance of healing practices to anti-colonial movements; and the relevance of these historical experiences to contemporary African public health and medicine. We will conclude with case studies of cutting-edge health issues in Africa.

This course will review the policies that influence new technology development and use in the health care sector. The course will explore how governments promote health innovation and regulate safety, and it will familiarize students with the broader social and the institutional factors that influence technology development, uptake and diffusion in health care systems.

This seminar introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of science and society studies, which investigates how science both shapes and reflects social values, institutions, and policies. Drawing from diverse perspectives, including philosophers, historians, economists and scientists, the course will examine the relationship between science and society and provide critical tools and conceptual frameworks for addressing contemporary debates on how science should be practiced and disseminated for social benefit. The primary focus will be on the life sciences and health with occasional consideration of other areas of science and policy.