Spring 2024 Class Schedule
Global Health Studies courses often reach their maximum capacity and subsequently close during registration. When this happens, students are advised to put themselves on a waitlist. If a student withdraws from a class, seats are filled from the waitlist. When necessary, graduating GHS seniors will be prioritized.
Students can add themselves to a waitlist in CAESAR by checking the “add me to the waitlist if this class is full” option when they put the course in their shopping cart.
Note that being on the waitlist does not guarantee admission into the class. Students will be contacted via email if spots become available. Students should not email GHS faculty or staff about gaining admission into a course. We are rarely able to add additional seats to a course, both because of space constraints in classrooms and to keep each faculty member's teaching capacity manageable.
Waitlists are in effect up until the last staff working day before a new quarter begins, during which time if a slot opens, we will fill it in order based on the policy of prioritizing entry for graduating seniors for core classes so they can graduate on time. This waitlist period will end on the last staff workday before classes start in a given quarter.
Spring 2024 class Schedule
Core Courses
Note: this schedule is subject to change, and will be solidified during Winter 2024.
Elective Courses
Elective course options will be posted during Winter 2024.
Spring 2024 course descriptions
GBL_HLTH 201: Introduction to Global Health
This 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. We will focus on social determinants of health, settler colonialism, colonialism, health and human rights, global health ethics, ecological determinants of health, and an overview of public health disciplines.
Fulfills Area III (Social and Behavioral Sciences) distribution requirement
GBL_HLTH 221: Beyond Porn: Sexuality, Health, and Pleasure
Threesomes. Squirting. Vibrators. Butt plugs. Multiple orgasms. You may have seen them in pornography, but have you ever wanted to study and talk about sex, and specifically, how to have a satisfying sex life? Many people look to pornography not just for entertainment, but also for education about what satisfying sexual encounters look like. Unfortunately, much of what people learn from pornography doesn't lead them to healthy and satisfying sexual encounters and relationships. This lecture class isn't actually about pornography. It goes beyond many presumptions about sex and pleasure depicted in pornography and popular culture, in order to equip students with information that can lead to more satisfying and healthy sexual experiences across their lifespan, regardless of how they identify, or who or what they like. The course also familiarizes students with a wide spectrum of human identities, practices, and attitudes towards sex and sexuality. Topics covered include: physiological and biological sex; gender; sexual orientation; homophobia and heterosexism; navigating sexual risks in a sex-positive way; sexual health disparities; sexual desire, arousal, and response; solitary sex & sex with others; sex toys; unconventional sexual practices; intimacy and effective communication; sexuality & aging; sexuality, disability & intimacy; sexual problems and solutions; sexual pleasure as part of sexual health; sexual harassment and violence; selling sex; and yes, a brief unit on problematics and possibilities in pornography.
Fulfills Area III (Social and Behavioral Sciences) distribution requirement
GBL_HLTH 222: The Social Determinants of Health
The human body is embedded into a health framework that can produce hypervisibility, invisibility, or both. This upper-level course examines the role of social markers of difference, including race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and religion, in current debates and challenges in the theory and practice of global health. We will explore recent illness experiences, therapeutic and self-care interventions, and health practices and behaviors in socio-cultural and historical context through case studies in the U.S., Brazil, and South Africa. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to key concepts such as embodiment, medicalization, structural violence, social determinants of health, biopolitics, health equity, and an ethic of care. Central questions of the course include: How do categories of "Othering" determine disease and health in individuals and collectives? How is medical science and care influenced by economic and political institutions, and by patient trust? How do social and economic inclusion/exclusion control access to health treatment, self-care, and care of loved ones This course focuses on the linkages between society and health inequalities in the U.S., U.S. territories, Brazil, and Africa. It offers a forum to explore how social standings (mis)inform policies. This course utilizes historical accounts, contemporary ethnographies, Twitter threads of health experiences, public health literature, media reports, TedTalks, and films to bring to life the "why's" of health differences.
Fulfills Area III (Social and Behavioral Sciences) distribution requirement
GBL_HLTH 318: Community-based Research Participation
Oftentimes we hear of research done on communities. What we hear less about is the power inequities, silences, and sometimes, violence, that many research paradigms (un)intentionally produce within their research. This course exposes prevalent assumptions underlying common research methodologies and demonstrates why they are problematic for many of the communities that researchers purport to want to assist. We then delve into community-based participatory research (CBPR), a research paradigm that challenges researchers to conduct research with communities. In this reading-intense discussion-based course, we will learn the historical and theoretical foundations, and the key principles of CBPR. Students will be introduced to methodological approaches to building community partnerships, research planning, and data sharing. Real-world applications of CBPR in health will be studied to illustrate benefits and challenges of this methodological approach to research. Further, this course will address culturally appropriate interventions, working with diverse communities, and ethical considerations in CBPR.
Fulfills Area III (Social and Behavioral Sciences) distribution requirement
GBL_HLTH 320: Qualitative Research Methods in Global Health
This course is designed to provide global health students with the tools they will need in order to design, revise, conduct, and write up current and future qualitative research projects relating to global health topics. This course is experientially driven, allowing students opportunities to actually "do" research, while providing careful mentoring and engaging in in-depth discussions about ethical and methodological issues associated with qualitative approaches and with working with living humans. Students will learn methods such as: writing research proposals, research ethics, writing ethnographic field notes, doing qualitative interviews and focus groups, analyzing and writing up data.
Fulfills Area III (Social and Behavioral Sciences) distribution requirement
GBL_HLTH 321: War and Public Health
This course draws on perspectives from anthropology and related social scientific fields to provide a comparative overview of the impact of armed conflict on public health and health care systems worldwide. Drawing primarily on examples from recent history, including conflicts in the Balkans, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East, we will explore warfare as a crucial sociopolitical determinant of global health disparities and consider organized efforts to respond to the health impacts of mass violence. Key topics that we will consider include variations in the relationship between warfare and public health across eras and cultures; the health and mental health impacts of forced displacement, military violence, and gender-based violence; and the roles of medical humanitarianism and humanitarian psychiatry in postwar recovery processes. Through close readings of classic and contemporary social theory, ethnographic accounts, and diverse research on war, health, and postwar humanitarian interventions, this course will encourage you to build your own critical perspective on war and public health anchored in history and the complexities of real-world situations.
Fulfills Area V (Ethics and Values) distribution requirement
GBL_HLTH 325: History of Reproductive Health
The history of reproduction is a large subject, and during this course we will touch on many, but by no means all, of what can be considered as part of this history. Our focus will be on human reproduction, considering the vantage points of both healthcare practitioners and lay women and men. We will look at ideas concerning fertility, conception, pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, birth control, abortion, and assisted reproduction. Because, at a fundamental level, reproduction is about power - as historian Amy Kaler (but by no means only Kaler), pointed out, "[c]control over human reproduction is eternally contested, in zones ranging from the comparative privacy of the conjugal bedroom to the political platform and programs of national polities" - we will pay attention to power in reproductive health. And, since the distribution of power in matters of reproduction has often been uneven and unequal - between men and women, between colonizing and Indigenous populations, between clinicians and lay people, between those in upper socioeconomic classes and those in lower socioeconomic classes - we will pay particular attention during this class to struggles over matters of reproduction as we explore historical changes and continuities in reproduction globally since 1900.
Fulfills Area IV (Historical Studies) distribution requirement
GBL_HLTH 337: Hazards, Disasters, and Society
This course examines how socioeconomic and environmental factors work together to cause hazards and disasters in human society. In this course we learn the main concepts about disaster such as preparedness, vulnerability, resilience, response, mitigation, etc. We learn that a disaster does not have the same effect on everyone (all groups of people), and factors of social inequality such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, make people more vulnerable to impacts of disasters. Also, this course, with an interdisciplinary perspective, analyzes disasters in the global North and South. This is a discussion-intensive course for advanced undergrad students. The classes are the student-centered with an emphasis on collaborative learning. The class meetings will consist of lecture, discussion, presentations, teamwork, activities, video/audio materials and projects.
Fulfills Area III (Social and Behavioral Sciences) distribution requirement
GBL_HLTH 390: Special Topics in Global Health: R.E.C.I.P.E: Returning Ethnic Culinary Importance, Practices, and Experiences to Health
The characteristics of a good recipe are said to have a list of the ingredients, the amounts needed, and the directions for mixing the ingredients. However, outside of food-based ingredients, there are also social elements that contribute to a good recipe. Food is something that outside of the social constructs of race, phobias, and isms, that can bind us all together. This interdisciplinary course focuses on defining togetherness, belongingness, and the end goal of a recipe— eating. Through the lens of recipes, meal-making, social stigmas, nutrition, and health students will explore how cultural culinary practices have become evidence for illnesses, diseases, and death for certain bodies. Course readings, videos, dialogue, and recipe analyses will provide a critical lens for students to delve into the multifaceted dimensions of culinary practices, their impact on individuals and communities, and how some practices have been sifted through and out.
GBL_HLTH 390: Special Topics in Global Health: Global Epidemics
From modern pandemics such as Ebola and COVID-19, to ancient scourges such as leprosy and the plague, epidemics have shaped human history. In turn, the response of human societies to infectious disease threats have varied wildly in time and across cultures. We are currently living such an event, and experiencing in dramatic fashion how disease reshapes society. This course will cover several prominent global epidemic episodes, examining the biology of the disease, epidemic pathways, sociopolitical responses and public health measures, and the relationship between the scientific and the cultural consequences of these outbreaks.
GBL_HLTH 390: Special Topics in Global Health: Literary Genres + Health: A TBR Readalong
GBL_HLTH 390: Special Topics in Global Health: Decolonisation, Knowledge, and Global Health
The field that is currently called "global health" is going through a reckoning with its history and its present. Much of that reckoning is about the colonial origins and underpinnings of the field, with a particular focus on "unfair knowledge practices" or epistemic injustice. In this seminar, we will examine the landscape of unfair knowledge practices in global health - i.e., the pervasive wrongs related to knowledge making, knowledge use, and knowledge sharing in global health - many of which are taken for granted. We will start with the unfairness inherent in how we often define global health itself, and what decolonisation means in relation to "global health". Using a range of conceptual tools, we will then examine various common practices especially in academic global health (e.g., authorship practices, research partnerships, academic writing, editorial practices, sensemaking/interpretive practices, and the choice of research audience, framing, topics, questions, and methods) and discuss when, how, and under what circumstances they may be deemed fair or unfair. We will use practical examples of each category of knowledge practice to think critically about what makes them fair or unfair. Using these examples, we will also examine what strategies might be required to promote fairness or epistemic justice, including the potential roles and responsibilities of the broad range of individual and institutional actors within the knowledge ecosystem of "global health".