Undergraduate - Courses
Fall 2005
| HIS394 The Rise of Modern Biomedicine: Global Trends in Health and Healing, 1500-2000 |
This course explores the global roots of biomedicine beginning in the period of European expansion and ending with the twentieth century consolidation of the World Health Organization (WHO). Particular emphasis is paid to migrations and circulations of all kinds: people, diseases, ideas, and practices. Students will be asked to consider the extent to which biomedicine has been successful in relieving human suffering over the centuries. They will also examine key debates surrounding the origins of epidemics and the efficacy of alternative and traditional medical systems. |
| HIS398 Technologies and Their Societies: Historical Perspectives |
The course describes the history of technology in America from the colonial period through industrialization and mass production to contemporary high-tech culture. Focusing on machines, we move from devices characteristic of each period (compound machines, power machinery and engines, dynamos and computers) to the technological systems built on them, and then to the social structures and adjustments that have accompanied their introduction and use. Students should finish the course with a sense of the subtlety and complexity of the role of technology in shaping American society and vice-versa. |
| HIS496 Africa, Medical Pluralism, and the History of Health and Disease |
This seminar explores the history of health and disease in Africa, focusing most extensively on the effects and legacies of European colonialism from 1880 to the present. The readings and class discussions will consider a variety of "healing" traditions and cognitive frameworks, both indigenous and introduced, that have enabled multiple approaches to healthcare to coexist in the continent. Some of the themes covered include magic and religion, infectious diseases (including sleeping sickness, malaria, TB, and HIV/AIDS), missionary medicine, racial research, and gender and reproductive health. |
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