History 183A: Health and Disease Prof. Abena Dove Osseo-Asare
Course Overview:
This course introduces major themes in the history of medicine through the lens of disease. It focuses on two questions: How have people defined well-being? How have they responded to illness? The course considers major diseases to understand their multiple meanings across time and space including: plague, cholera, influenza, sleeping sickness, PTSD, AIDS and malaria. Themes to be considered include changing theories of disease causality, the development of international public health policy, social understandings of the body, and the growth of the pharmaceutical industry. The course emphasizes the roles governments, medical practitioners, and patients play in the social construction of disease and health. Case studies will be analyzed through readings, lectures and films.
Course Goals:
Primarily, this course aims to equip participants with tools for reading and researching about the past. Further, it provides a useful introduction to medical history across cultures for those considering a career in medicine or public health. It shows how people define illness according to particular social and cultural categories overtime. Through specific case studies, the course provides participants with an historical framework to interpret current debates in health policy and disease management.
Assignments:
Course participants will write two short papers (20%), take a midterm (15%) and a final (35%). Attendance and participation in class discussions contributes towards 30% of final grade.
Books:
Required-
Charles
Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in
1832, 1849, and 1866
Michel
Cochrane, When AIDS Began: San Francisco and the
Making of an Epidemic
Randall
Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short
History of Malaria
Course Reader (Available at University Copy, 2425 Channing Way)
Recommended-
Mary J.
Dobson, Disease: The Extraordinary Stories Behind
History’s Deadliest Killers