Spring 2018 Class Schedule
Course | Title | Instructor | Day/Time | Type | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Core | |||||||
GBL_HLTH 301 | Introduction to International Public Health | Sarah Rodriguez | Core | ||||
GBL_HLTH 301 Introduction to International Public HealthThis course introduces students to pressing disease and health care problems worldwide and examines efforts currently underway to address them. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the course identifies the main actors, institutions, practices and forms of knowledge production characteristic of what we call “global health” today, and explores the environmental, social, political and economic factors that shape patterns and experiences of illness and healthcare across societies. We will scrutinize the value systems that underpin specific paradigms in the policy and science of global health and place present-day developments in historical perspective. Key topics will include: policies and approaches to global health governance and interventions, health care funding, maternal and infant health, reproductive health, and chronic and infectious diseases. | |||||||
GBL_HLTH 302 | Global Bioethics | Sarah Rodriguez | Core | ||||
GBL_HLTH 302 Global BioethicsGlobal health is a popular field of work and study for Americans, with an increasing number of medical trainees and practitioners, as well as people without medical training, going abroad to volunteer in areas where there are few health care practitioners or resources. In addition, college undergraduates, as well as medical trainees and practitioners, are going abroad in increasing numbers to conduct research in areas with few health care resources. But all of these endeavors, though often entered into with the best of intentions, are beset with ethical questions, concerns, and dilemmas, and can have unintended consequences. In this course, students will assess these ethical challenges. In so doing, students will examine core ethical codes, guidelines, and principals – such as solidarity, social justice, and humility – so they will be able to ethically assess global health practices in a way that places an emphasis on the core goal of global health: reducing health inequities and disparities. | |||||||
GBL_HLTH 320 | Qualitative Research Methods in Global Health | Noelle Sullivan | Core | ||||
GBL_HLTH 320 Qualitative Research Methods in Global Health | |||||||
GBL_HLTH 322 | The Social Determinants of Health | Peter Locke | Core | ||||
GBL_HLTH 322 The Social Determinants of HealthThis upper-level seminar in medical anthropology examines the role of social markers of difference including race, class, nationality, gender, sexuality, age and religion in current debates and challenges in the theory and practice of global health. We will explore contemporary illness experiences and therapeutic interventions in sociocultural and historical context through case studies from the US, Brazil, and South Africa. Students will be introduced to key concepts such as embodiment, medicalization, structural violence, the social determinants of health, and biopolitics. Central questions of the seminar include: How do social categories of difference determine disease and health in individuals and collectivities? How is medical science influenced by economic and political institutions and by patient mobilization? How does social and economic inclusion/exclusion govern access to treatment as well as care of the self and others? The course will provide advanced instruction in anthropological and related social scientific research methods as they apply to questions of social inequality and public health policy in both the United States and in emerging economic powers. The course draws from historical accounts, contemporary ethnographies, public health literature, media reports, and films. | |||||||
GBL_HLTH 390 | Native American Health | Beatriz Reyes | Core | ||||
GBL_HLTH 390 Native American HealthThis course introduces students to the social determinants of health that influence the broader health status and access to health care for Native American populations in the United States. Students will engage in a reading-intensive, discussion-based seminar, drawing upon research and contributions from a variety of disciplines including public health, Native American and Indigenous Studies, anthropology, sociology, history, nursing, and medicine. Some seminar topics will include infectious diseases and the Columbian Exchange, federal obligations to Native American people, community-based participatory research, intergenerational/historical trauma, and indigenous health globally. | |||||||
GBL_HLTH 390 | Biocultural Perspectives on Water Insecurity | Sera Young | Core | ||||
GBL_HLTH 390 Biocultural Perspectives on Water InsecurityThe first objective of this course is to introduce students to the many ways that water impacts our world. We will discuss what the international recommendations for safely managed water are and the health and social consequences of water insecurity. The second objective is explore why there is such variety in water insecurity worldwide. These discussions will be guided by the socio-ecological framework, in which dimensions ranging from the individual to the geopolitical are considered. Influences on access to water will be broadly considered; we will draw on literature in global health, ethnography, the life sciences, and public policy. The third objective is to develop critical thinking and writing abilities to reflect on the multi-dimensional causes and consequences of water insecurity. | |||||||
GBL_HLTH 390 | Achieving Global Impact Through Local Engagement | Michael Diamond | Core | ||||
GBL_HLTH 390 Achieving Global Impact Through Local EngagementThis course is designed for those global health students who are seeking ways to have an impact on these global health issues by engaging in local programs and organizations which are addressing these global health challenges. Students will study global and local mechanisms and patterns of the circulation of disease, and their relation to environmental, cultural, socio-economic and political influences. Students will explore roles and programs of global and local public, private and civil society sectors in addressing specific health issues. Each student will be expected to identify a local organization or program prior to the start of the course, with which they would like to volunteer. Students will examine the programs and the geographical regions of these organizations and identify the specific opportunities and roles that are available to them as volunteers, and as professionals. Special attention will be given to understanding due diligence, accountability and mechanisms for measuring impact. | |||||||
GLOBAL_HEALTH 390 | Managing Global Health Challenges | Michael Diamond | Core | ||||
GLOBAL_HEALTH 390 Managing Global Health ChallengesDisease knows no borders. Both pathogens and lifestyles move around the world and the people of every country share the risks. The responsibility for ensuring the public health rests with governments at local, national and international levels. Public health interventions require cooperation and partnerships at each level and with civil society organizations, corporations, businesses and individuals. Advances in technology can significantly reduce the burden of disease and improve the quality of health and life. To effectively address global health challenges, technology must be integrated into health systems in ways that are both appropriate and sustainable. These interventions are affected by public policies, availability of resources and theories of public health and disease. Existing health organizations are increasingly challenged by the scope and magnitude of the current and future threats to public health such as the AIDS pandemic; the emergence of new and more virulent infectious diseases; the threats of bio-terrorism; growing resistance to antibiotics; lack of basic infrastructure of water, sanitation and inadequate access to drugs in developing countries; and overabundance of foods and complications from affluence, leading to health problems such as diabetes in higher income countries. This course will examine the global epidemiology of these diseases and threats to the populations of the world, and the current technological and organizational strategies that have been established to respond. A series of diseases and geographical regions will be analyzed to consider how the international community uses technology and organizes its response to current problems in global public health. Special attention will be given to examples of effective technologies and intervention strategies. | |||||||
Elective | |||||||
ANTHRO 309 | Human Osteology | Erin Waxenbaum Dennison | Elective | ||||
ANTHRO 309 Human OsteologyKnowledge of human osteology forms the basis of physical and forensic anthropology, bioarchaeology, paleoanthropology and clinical anatomy. This course will provide an intensive introduction to the human skeleton; particularly the identification of complete and fragmentary skeletal remains. Through this course you will be exposed to techniques for identification and classification of human skeletal anatomy through hands-on, dry laboratory sessions. Additional time outside of class is available and may be required to review practical materials. | |||||||
ANTHRO 312 | Human Population Biology | Aaron Miller | Elective | ||||
ANTHRO 312 Human Population BiologyThis course will provide an overview of current theory and research in human population biology. The course will focus on the influence of ecological and social factors on various aspects of human biology (e.g. metabolism, growth, nutritional status, disease patterns). The adaptation concept will first be presented, discussed, and critiqued. We will then examine how adaptation to different ecological stressors (e.g. temperature, solar radiation, high altitude, diet/nutrition) promotes human biological diversity. | |||||||
ANTHRO 314 | Human Growth and Development | Erin Waxenbaum Dennison | Elective | ||||
ANTHRO 314 Human Growth and DevelopmentIntegrated biological and cultural perspective on human growth and development from infancy through adolescence; cross-cultural variation in developmental processes and outcomes. | |||||||
ANTHRO 330 | Peoples of the World: Ethnography of North Africa | Katherine Hoffman | Elective | ||||
ANTHRO 330 Peoples of the World: Ethnography of North AfricaWhile North Africa (the Maghrib) is often considered an appendage of the Muslim Middle East, this Mediterranean region merits study on its own, given its French colonial past and its connections to both sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. This course introduces students to the region through text and expressive culture (visual culture and music). Required readings will include one book or its equivalent in articles per week, drawing from anthropology, related social sciences and humanities, and historical fiction. In-depth study of Amazigh (‘Berber') and rural populations will complement the study of Arab and urban populations in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Major themes include language and expression, orality and literacy, colonialism, nationalism, religion, migration, and gender. Assessments are based on active participation, weekly responses, discussion facilitation, and two synthesis papers bringing together the readings around a theme. | |||||||
ANTHRO 390 | Sex & Surveillance | Mitali Thakor | Elective | ||||
ANTHRO 390 Sex & SurveillanceScopophilia is the derivation of pleasure from looking. What pleasures does the surveillance state gain from looking at us? From feeling and documenting us? How do privacy activists fight back against such surveillance, and what might be wrong with privacy rights discourse? Which groups are always already surveilled? In this class, students will play with notions of surveillance—including sousveillance, lateral surveillance, and counter surveillance—as engaged by queer and feminist studies, the cultural anthropology of expertise, and social studies of science and technology. We will draw on case studies ranging from police technologies, facial recognition software, PornHub's data collection projects, TSA airport body scanners, Facebook ads, science fiction like Black Mirror, and more to understand how bodies, races, genders, and sexualities are made known and contested by activists, artists, corporations, and governments. Students will also collect data for a creative personal surveillance project culminating at the end of the quarter. | |||||||
ANTHRO 390 | Dietary Decolonization | Hi'ilei Hobart | Elective | ||||
ANTHRO 390 Dietary DecolonizationIn response to the negative social effects of globalization and industrialization on the contemporary food system, there has developed increased attention to questions of sustainability, food justice, and food sovereignty. While such concepts are useful for thinking about liberatory food futures more generally, they often draw upon foundational Indigenous concepts without directly naming them as such. This course, then, focuses on new discourses about food sovereignty by highlighting (rather than obscuring) the linkages between decolonial or sovereign food futures and histories of erasure and dispossession of Native peoples. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, course readings draw from the fields of Food Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Pacific Island Studies in the form of academic articles, cookbooks, short film, and poetry. Throughout, we will question the potentialities of food sovereignty within the settler state, whether dietary decolonization is possible in the so-called age of the Anthropocene, and the limits of working within and against today's legacies of the colonial food system. | |||||||
BIOL_SCI 355 | Immunobiology | Eric Mosser | Elective | ||||
BIOL_SCI 355 ImmunobiologyThe immune system is the primary defense mechanism of vertebrates against invading pathogenic organisms. This cellular system has the remarkable ability to recognize as foreign any material which is not normally a constituent of an individual's own tissues. This includes not only bacteria, viruses, and tumor cells when they express modified or new proteins, but nearly all compounds from a chemist's shelf - natural and synthetic. The immune system confronts this vast universe of foreign materials, referred to as antigens, by synthesizing an equally vast array of proteins each of which can bind to one antigen, and by so doing eliminate it. How this array of antigen-receptors is generated, how the genes which encode these are organized, the strategies adopted by the immune system to specifically activate the cells which bear the receptors and fastidiously eliminate self recognition are addressed in this course. | |||||||
BMD_ENG 380 | Medical Devices, Disease & Global Health | Matthew Glucksberg | Elective | ||||
BMD_ENG 380 Medical Devices, Disease & Global HealthHealth systems and technologies to address health problems of the world’s underserved populations, with special emphasis on developing countries. | |||||||
CFS 392-20 | Field Studies in Public Health | Lauren Keenan-Devlin | Elective | ||||
CFS 392-20 Field Studies in Public HealthField Studies in Public Health was developed for students interested in health-related fields, including public health, medicine, and health policy. In this course, students will learn the broad definition of Public Health and its history, and will explore the complexity of this field by examining current public health issues such as food safety, gun violence, and healthcare reform. The course will provide students an opportunity to consider how the theory and ideology of public health square up with the practice of this field at their internship sites. | |||||||
COMM_ST 367 | Nonprofit Communication Management | Michelle Shumate | Elective | ||||
COMM_ST 367 Nonprofit Communication ManagementThis course focuses on the management of nonprofit organizations. Topics include (a) the dynamics of the social sector, (b) identifying stakeholders, (c) governing and leading nonprofit organizations, (d) communication strategies for enhancing capacity, (e) organizational assessment, and (f) obtaining and managing resources. This year, students will self select into teams working on specific identified projects for clients. | |||||||
ECON 326 | The Economics of Developing Countries | Cynthia Kinnan | Elective | ||||
ECON 326 The Economics of Developing CountriesThis course examines causes of poverty and underdevelopment, and their implications for economic growth and individuals' well-being. The focus of the course is on microeconomic issues relating to markets, firms and households in developing countries. We will ask such questions as "Why do the poor borrow at higher interest rates than the rich?", "Do the poor under-invest in education and health?", and "How can public policy be used to improve the well-being of people in developing countries?" Topics include financial access, health and nutrition, education, insurance, migration and the role of institutions in development. We will also emphasize the interlinkages between the topics discussed in the course, for instance: How does investment in health depend on access to savings and credit? Does the presence of informal insurance affect how government education policies should be evaluated? Do the consequences of improved migration opportunities depend on how well credit markets function? We will combine economic theory and empirical analysis using data from developing countries to investigate these questions. | |||||||
ENGLISH 385 | Topics in Combined Studies: Oil Slicks, Ailments, and Inkwells: Literatures of Environmental Medicine | Seth Swanner | Elective | ||||
ENGLISH 385 Topics in Combined Studies: Oil Slicks, Ailments, and Inkwells: Literatures of Environmental MedicineEmphysema, lead poisoning, and other pollutant-inflicted diseases demonstrate that our exploitation of the natural world endangers not just polar bears and pollinators but people, as well. This is not, however, a realization as recent as the Paris Accord or the Flint water crisis. For hundreds of years, scientists, physicians, and even poets have described the volatile, sometimes sickening interactions among pollution, the environment, and the human body. And so, in addition to modern pathologies of toxicity, students in this course will explore historical literary depictions of bubonic plague, smallpox, and even spontaneous combustion as they theorize the medical consequences of human pollution. We will see that even historically distant authors like Thomas Dekker, Charles Dickens, and Margaret Atwood all write with an eye toward environmental justice and medical access for society's most ailing members—human, animal, and botanical alike. | |||||||
GNDR_ST 332 | Gender, Sexuality, and Health: Anthropology of Reproduction | Amy Partridge | Elective | ||||
GNDR_ST 332 Gender, Sexuality, and Health: Anthropology of ReproductionThe goal of sociocultural anthropology, the largest subfield of anthropology and the core of the discipline, is to understand the dynamics of human variation in social action and cultural thought. A key question is how these variations are produced and reproduced, whether we speak of society (subsistence, ideas) or individuals (biology, psychology, social identity). Conversely, what happens when reproduction fails to occur, or does so under undesirable conditions? Because reproduction is so strongly associated with biology in our society, viewing it through a cultural lens poses significant challenges to some of our most basic tenets. Tensions arise in questions of agency vs. control, nature vs. culture, identity construction, authenticity, technology, surveillance, and power. Needless to say, the study of reproduction offers a window into the heart of anthropology itself. The course seeks (1) to expose students to just a few of the many sociocultural approaches to reproduction by ranging broadly across topics, time, and place; and (2) to identify and evaluate concepts and theories embedded in writings on the dynamics of reproduction. While the concept of "reproduction" can refer to societal reproduction, emphasis will be on the reproduction of children. To this end, possible topics may include fostering/adoption, AIDS orphans, fatherhood, technologies of fertility control, assisted reproduction, obstetrics, gender imbalances in Asia, debates over abortion, etc. | |||||||
HISTORY 300 | New Lectures in History - "Sickness & Health in Latin America" | Paul Ramirez | Elective | ||||
HISTORY 300 New Lectures in History - "Sickness & Health in Latin America"In 1492 the New World became a crucible for the exchange of diseases, medications, and healing practices of American, European, and African origin. This course explores change and continuity in the healing arts and sciences in Latin America and the Caribbean in the centuries since. A key angle of inquiry will be the ways global frameworks help to make sense of local practice and how local knowledge informed national, hemispheric, and Atlantic developments in public health and medicine. Topics include Aztec medicine and conceptions of the human body; the "Columbian Exchange" of diseases, animals, and pharmaceuticals; the global commodification of American botanical knowledge (anti-syphilitics and anti-malarials such as Peruvian bark); Catholicism, shamanism, and other ritual frameworks for healing; modern disease eradication campaigns; and medical pluralism in Latin America today. | |||||||
LATINO 392 | Topics in Latina and Latino Social and Political Issues: Decolonial Research Methodologies | Eliva Mendoza | Elective | ||||
LATINO 392 Topics in Latina and Latino Social and Political Issues: Decolonial Research MethodologiesThe objective of this course is to explore the process of inquiry from the critical standpoints of peoples seeking to decenter dominant research models. In discussing different forms of knowledge, practices of producing knowledge, knowledge construction, and ways of sharing knowledge we will examine the (neo)colonial underpinnings of dominant research models to understand the ramifications of the influence they have in what is considered legitimate knowledge. We will put this analysis in conversation with communities/activists/scholars/artists who make critical interventions in how, why, and for whom processes of inquiry are carried out. Recognizing the tensions that emerge when politically engaged or activist-based research meets academic rigor, we will explore and discuss the ways and extent to which an academic scholar may engage with decolonizing research methods. | |||||||
PHIL 326 | Philosophy of Medicine | Mark Sheldon | Elective | ||||
PHIL 326 Philosophy of MedicineAn exploration of a variety of issues that have arisen in medical practice and biological research and development, focusing particularly on the physician/patient relationship through a focus on a series of clinical cases. A central question involves the nature and objectives of medicine, and how the physician engages with that nature and pursues those objectives. | |||||||
PUB_HLTH 490 | Advanced Global Public Health | Alyson Lofthouse | Elective | ||||
PUB_HLTH 490 Advanced Global Public HealthThis course will provide an in depth exploration the current approaches to eradicating long-term social and economic inequalities in health outcomes around the world. We will begin with a review of the current state of global health, highlighting the areas of major gains since 2000, and current trends and emerging health challenges (e.g., chronic metabolic diseases, emerging/re-emerging infectious diseases). We will then directly examine the diverse strategies that have been used to improve health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries. These strategies range from biomedical interventions (e.g., vaccine campaigns, nutritional supplementation) to broader, macro-level approaches such as targeted cash transfers and agricultural reform. Drawing on detailed case studies, we will explore (a) the nature and structure of global health interventions, (b) the creation of successful partnerships for sustaining health outcomes, and (c) the importance of data collection and analysis for monitoring the effectiveness of program interventions. | |||||||
SESP 303 | Designing for Social Change | Daniel Cohen | Elective | ||||
SESP 303 Designing for Social ChangeCharacteristics of successful programs in a variety of areas, including human development, education, social welfare, and health promotion. |