Overview of Current Courses
The Department of Medical History and Bioethics offers a variety of courses for undergraduate and graduate/professional students. Course offerings are described below.
Please consult Course Search and Enroll made available by the UW Office of the Registrar for a real-time, online listing of the course sections offered each semester.
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
Spring 2025
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: |
|
| This course surveys the medical and scientific constructions of ideas about race and ethnicity since the eighteenth century. We will place the development of racial theories of sickness and health in a broad social and political context – and, in particular, explain the medical salience of race in the setting of slavery and colonialism. Discussions will focus primarily on North America and Europe, but will also explore the making of knowledge about race in global settings. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Monday/Wednesday, 9:55-10:45 am Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 523: Instructor: Susan Lederer |
|
| Provides historical perspectives on current dilemmas facing black patients and health care professionals. | Crosslisted with African American Studies and History of Science
3 cr.; Counts for Ethnic Studies requirement, Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S, Advanced Tuesday/Thursday 11:00am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 525: Instructor: |
|
| Explores how a humanistic perspective can broaden our understanding of health and medicine. Specifically, we will examine the role of language and culture in the creation and circulation of biomedical knowledge; our lived experiences with illness (physical and mental); the intricate intersections of race, gender, sexuality, disability and medicine; the political dimensions of diagnosis, disease, and epidemics, and the role that fiction, creative non-fiction, comics, and film play in shaping our experiences with health and medicine as health care providers and as patients. The course does not assume any background in science or medicine. One of our recurrent topics, in fact, will be to consider how non-experts interact with medicine and its technical vocabularies. Although the primary objective of the course is to understand the cultural, social, and political dimensions of health and medicine, a secondary objective is for students to become more savvy patients and, for the few students who might emerge on the other side of the stethoscope one day, more well rounded health care professionals. | Cross-listed with English and History of Science
3 cr.; H(Humanities), A(Advanced) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Tuesday/Thursday 11 am-12:15 pm Prerequisites: Declared in the Health and the Humanities certificate |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Directed study projects as arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 709: Instructor: |
|
| Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature concerning public health issues and problems in America from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and efforts made toward their solutions. | Not cross-listed
1 credit Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate/professional standing and concurrent enrollment in HIST SCI/MED HIST 509 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructor: |
|
| Survey in bioethics aimed at students in the health sciences. Topics to include a mix of important perennial issues and emerging problems. | Not cross-listed
1 credit Tuesdays 5:30 – 7:00 pm, February 24 – May 2 Prerequisites: Declared in Medicine program |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 740: Instructors: |
|
| Narrative medicine is the practice of using stories to understand health and illness in the context of people’s lives. Whether through fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, text or graphics, giving voice to the stories of patients and caregivers allows their experiences to be heard, made sense of, and valued. Learning to listen to others and to express one’s own vulnerabilities are valuable tools for all health practitioners, but they are especially valuable in the context of public health. The scope of public health interventions encourages practitioners to think in terms of populations, but efforts to improve quality of life through prevention must ultimately be grounded in individual lives. Explore how narrative medicine techniques can enrich the practice of public health, both through the power of listening to stories to understand how individuals experience health and through the power of telling stories to mobilize communities. | Not cross-listed
2 cr. ONLINE; Monday-Friday, January 6 – January 19 Prerequisite: MED Professional or declared in Physician Assistant, Nursing, Physical Therapy, Pharmacy, or Genetic Counselor Studies |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 744: Instructors: |
|
| Introduction to the medical humanities and their application to clinical practice, utilizing a variety of humanistic approaches, drawing from history, philosophy, anthropology, literary studies, and religious studies. Engage with a variety of forms of expression, including essays, poetry, film, podcasts, music, and visual art. These humanistic approaches complement the science-focused approach of contemporary medical education by enhancing students’ ability to offer more compassionate and culturally competent care, and helping students build resiliency through using artistic forms of expression to process their experiences. Engage with the medical humanities through a different theme, such as the doctor-patient relationship, death and dying, or healing and wholeness. | Not cross-listed
2 credits, Enrollment limited to Professional Medical Students Online; Monday-Friday, February 17-March 2 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 745: Instructor: |
|
| Examine how ethical issues in clinical practice affect public health outcomes. Gain an understanding of the ethical frameworks and practices that are employed in medicine, in order to understand the complex interplay between public health and clinical care. Develop the ability to identify the ethically salient features of a patient case and to employ ethical analysis to generate recommendations that improve public health outcomes. | Not cross-listed
2 credits Online; Monday-Friday, February 17-March 2 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 746: Instructor: Dana Landress |
|
| Examine ideas about race and ethnicity and their relationship to the history of “Western” medicine and science. Analyze the role of social, economic, cultural, and political developments in the shaping of scientific and medical notions of race and bodily difference. Study how skin color (and other elements of “racial identity”) has influenced the experiences of patients and populations, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers. Discuss how conceptions of race have shaped both the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past three hundred years, and the structure of medical institutions in the United States. Topics include the origins of racial classification, race and colonialism, the health and medical care of the enslaved, the use of enslaved people as research subjects, the history of racial disparities in medicine, structural racism of the medical establishment, race and reproduction, and the struggle for justice in health care during the past few decades. | Not cross-listed
2 credits, Enrollment limited to Professional Medical Students Online; Monday-Friday, February 17-March 2 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructors: Staff |
|
| Independent research and writing for graduate students under the supervision of a faculty member. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Consent of Instructor |
Fall 2024
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Nicholas Jacobson |
|
| This course surveys the medical and scientific constructions of ideas about race and ethnicity since the eighteenth century. We will place the development of racial theories of sickness and health in a broad social and political context – and, in particular, explain the medical salience of race in the setting of slavery and colonialism. Discussions will focus primarily on North America and Europe, but will also explore the making of knowledge about race in global settings. | Cross-listed with History and History of Science
3 cr.; H(Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Monday/Wednesday 8:50 – 9:40 am Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructors: Dana Landress |
|
| Health problems in the U.S. from the colonial period to the twentieth century; efforts made toward their solutions. | Cross-listed with History of Science
3 cr.; Biological Science, I (Intermediate) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am-12:15 pm Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructors: Norman Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the core ethical issues in clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation, including the pending changes to the Common Rule.. | Cross-listed with History of Science
1 cr.; Advanced Wednesday 4:00 am-6:00 pm Prerequisites: Consent of instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructors: Staff |
|
| Directed study projects as arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 729: Instructors: Karola Kreitmair |
|
| Opportunity to learn and employ foundational methods and principles of bioethics. Gain an understanding of modes of argument in bioethics and hone the craft of analyzing and constructing ethical arguments, and foreseeing and responding to potential objections. | Not cross-listed
1 credit; Professional October 1-November 22 Prerequisites: Declared in Medicine program |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 742: Instructors: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| Understand and analyze the U.S. health care system through the lens of ethical criticisms made by and on behalf of the diverse populations it serves. Gain understanding of philosophical debates over universal health insurance coverage, fair health care financing, effective cost-containment, and rationing. Hone the craft of constructing ethical arguments, and foreseeing and responding to potential objections.
This iteration of the course will focus on transplant ethics, including ethical and policy issues related to the procurement and allocation of transplantable organs. Seminars will take place in the mornings (usually 10:30am-12pm), with an online option provided for students whose med school responsibilities prevent in-person attendance (e.g. WARM and TRIUMPH students). |
Not cross-listed
2 credits Hybrid; Monday-Friday, 10:30am – 12pm September 3-13 Prerequisites: MED SC-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 744: Instructors: Nicole C. Nelson and Elizabeth Fleming |
|
| Introduction to the medical humanities and their application to clinical practice, utilizing a variety of humanistic approaches, drawing from history, philosophy, anthropology, literary studies, and religious studies. Engage with a variety of forms of expression, including essays, poetry, film, podcasts, music, and visual art. These humanistic approaches complement the science-focused approach of contemporary medical education by enhancing students’ ability to offer more compassionate and culturally competent care, and helping students build resiliency through using artistic forms of expression to process their experiences. Engage with the medical humanities through a different theme, such as the doctor-patient relationship, death and dying, or healing and wholeness. | Not cross-listed
2 credits, Enrollment limited to Professional Medical Students Online; Monday-Friday, September 30-October 11 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 746: Instructors: Susan Lederer and Pablo Gómez |
|
| Examine ideas about race and ethnicity and their relationship to the history of “Western” medicine and science. Analyze the role of social, economic, cultural, and political developments in the shaping of scientific and medical notions of race and bodily difference. Study how skin color (and other elements of “racial identity”) has influenced the experiences of patients and populations, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers. Discuss how conceptions of race have shaped both the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past three hundred years, and the structure of medical institutions in the United States. Topics include the origins of racial classification, race and colonialism, the health and medical care of the enslaved, the use of enslaved people as research subjects, the history of racial disparities in medicine, structural racism of the medical establishment, race and reproduction, and the struggle for justice in health care during the past few decades. | Not cross-listed
2 credits, Enrollment limited to Professional Medical Students Online; Monday-Friday, October 28-November 8 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 750: Instructors: Richard Keller |
|
| Explore national and international health projects aimed to address infectious disease epidemics in the context of changing ideas about human difference, the shifting economic and socio-political dimensions of international health, and the history of migration. Using a range of sources from historical documents, social science, films, and biomedical research, explore circumstances linking ideas about “alien” people (a term historically used to talk about enslaved people, Native Americans, minorities, and immigrants), and “plagues.” Examine the relationship between ideas about disease and migration, risk factors and disease patterns related to migration, migrant populations’ access to health-care resources, perceived threats of infectious diseases related to migrant populations and the ways such threats have shaped medical theories, and the institutional landscape of global health. | Not cross-listed
2 credits, Enrollment limited to Professional Medical Students Online; Monday-Friday, November 11-November 22 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 890: Instructors: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| Independent reading, research and writing for medical professional students under the supervision of a faculty member. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Consent of Instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructors: Staff |
|
| Independent research and writing for graduate students under the supervision of a faculty member. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Consent of Instructor |
Please see the Guide for Undergraduate & Graduate Course and Degree Information:
Courses in Prior Terms
This is an accordion element with a series of buttons that open and close related content panels.
Summer 2024
|
Medical History and Bioethics 132: Instructor: Bennett McIntosh |
|
| How did today’s biology emerge out of the diverse traditions of agriculture and natural history (bees and trees), biomedicine and molecular biology (germs and genes), which stretch back into the eighteenth century? Examines classic texts and “game-changers” in the history of biology, putting them into broader scientific and social contexts to see how these different ways of knowing intertwined, competed, and yielded novel approaches to the study of life that still shape today’s life sciences. | Cross-listed with History and History of Science
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Online Course: June 17 – July 14 Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Emma Wathen |
|
| A survey of different conceptions of how the body as a site of sickness has been understood from Antiquity to contemporary medicine. Includes consideration of the origins and evolution of public health, the changing social role of healers, and the emergence of the modern “standardized” body in health and illness. | Cross-listed with History of Science
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Online Course: May 28th – June 23 Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Directed study projects as arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Independent research and writing for graduate students under the supervision of a faculty member. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; Time to be arranged Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor |
Spring 2024
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Nicholas Jacobson |
|||||||||
| This course surveys the medical and scientific constructions of ideas about race and ethnicity since the eighteenth century. We will place the development of racial theories of sickness and health in a broad social and political context – and, in particular, explain the medical salience of race in the setting of slavery and colonialism. Discussions will focus primarily on North America and Europe, but will also explore the making of knowledge about race in global settings. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Monday/Wednesday, 9:55-10:45 am Prerequisites: None |
||||||||
|
Medical History and Bioethics 331: Instructor: Cara Rock-singer |
|||||||||
| Introduction to the study of religion, science, and medicine. Focus on how religion, science, and medicine have shaped practices of knowledge production and meaning making with respect to human life, by considering theories of human history and racial progress; how logics of contagion structure human relationships and communal boundaries; the variety of ways of understanding and caring for bodies; and the place of humans within broader ecologies. | Crosslisted with History of Science and Religious Studies
3 cr.; H (Humanities) I (Intermediate) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
||||||||
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructor: Dana Landress |
|||||||||
| Health problems in the U.S. from the colonial period to the twentieth century; efforts made toward their solutions. | Cross-listed with History of Science
3 cr.; Biological Science, I (Intermediate) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am-12:15 pm Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
||||||||
|
Medical History and Bioethics 525: Instructor: Caroline Hensley |
|||||||||
| Explores how a humanistic perspective can broaden our understanding of health and medicine. Specifically, we will examine the role of language and culture in the creation and circulation of biomedical knowledge; our lived experiences with illness (physical and mental); the intricate intersections of race, gender, sexuality, disability and medicine; the political dimensions of diagnosis, disease, and epidemics, and the role that fiction, creative non-fiction, comics, and film play in shaping our experiences with health and medicine as health care providers and as patients. The course does not assume any background in science or medicine. One of our recurrent topics, in fact, will be to consider how non-experts interact with medicine and its technical vocabularies. Although the primary objective of the course is to understand the cultural, social, and political dimensions of health and medicine, a secondary objective is for students to become more savvy patients and, for the few students who might emerge on the other side of the stethoscope one day, more well rounded health care professionals. | Cross-listed with English and History of Science
3 cr.; H(Humanities), A(Advanced) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Tuesday/Thursday 11 am-12:15 pm Prerequisites: Declared in the Health and the Humanities certificate |
||||||||
|
Medical History and Bioethics 531: Instructor: Judith Houck |
|||||||||
| Women as patients and as health professionals in America from the colonial period to the present. | Cross-listed with History of Science and Gender and Womens Studies
3 cr.; Biological Sciences, I(Intermediate) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Tuesday/Thursday 9:30 am-10:45 am Prerequisites: Sophomore standing |
||||||||
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructor: Rob Streiffer |
|||||||||
| Study of ethical issues arising from medical procedures and aspects of health care such as abortion, genetic screening, paternalism, informed consent, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, and human subjects research. (This course does meet the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s requirement for a writing-intensive course as described at https://www.med.wisc.edu/education/md-program/admissions/premedical-requirements/.) | Cross listed with History of Science and Philosophy
3 credits. Z (Humanities or Social Science) I (Intermediate) Tuesday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: Junior standing |
||||||||
|
|||||||||
|
Medical History and Bioethics 744: Instructors: Jessica Babal and Liana Eskola |
|||||||||
| Introduction to the medical humanities and their application to clinical practice, utilizing a variety of humanistic approaches, drawing from history, philosophy, anthropology, literary studies, and religious studies. Engage with a variety of forms of expression, including essays, poetry, film, podcasts, music, and visual art. These humanistic approaches complement the science-focused approach of contemporary medical education by enhancing students’ ability to offer more compassionate and culturally competent care, and helping students build resiliency through using artistic forms of expression to process their experiences. Engage with the medical humanities through a different theme, such as the doctor-patient relationship, death and dying, or healing and wholeness. | Not cross-listed
2 credits Online; Monday-Friday Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
||||||||
|
Medical History and Bioethics 745: Instructors: Karola Kreitmair |
|||||||||
| Examine how ethical issues in clinical practice affect public health outcomes. Gain an understanding of the ethical frameworks and practices that are employed in medicine, in order to understand the complex interplay between public health and clinical care. Develop the ability to identify the ethically salient features of a patient case and to employ ethical analysis to generate recommendations that improve public health outcomes. | Not cross-listed
2 credits Online; Monday-Friday Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
||||||||
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Pablo Gomez |
|||||||||
| Analyzes the scientific and social aspects of the development of modern medicine and public health in Latin America. | Cross-listed with History of Science
3 credits Wednesday 1:30-3:15 pm Prerequisite: Graduate/professional standing and Instructor consent |
||||||||
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Independent research and writing for graduate students under the supervision of a faculty member. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; Time to be arranged Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor |
Fall 2023
Summer 2023
|
Medical History and Bioethics 132: Instructor: TBA |
|
| How did today’s biology emerge out of the diverse traditions of agriculture and natural history (bees and trees), biomedicine and molecular biology (germs and genes), which stretch back into the eighteenth century? Examines classic texts and “game-changers” in the history of biology, putting them into broader scientific and social contexts to see how these different ways of knowing intertwined, competed, and yielded novel approaches to the study of life that still shape today’s life sciences. | Cross-listed with History and History of Science
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Online Course: July 3 – August 13 Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: TBA |
|
| A survey of different conceptions of how the body as a site of sickness has been understood from Antiquity to contemporary medicine. Includes consideration of the origins and evolution of public health, the changing social role of healers, and the emergence of the modern “standardized” body in health and illness. | Cross-listed with History of Science
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Online Course: June 19 – July 16 Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Directed study projects as arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Independent research and writing for graduate students under the supervision of a faculty member. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; Time to be arranged Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor |
Spring 2023
|
Medical History and Bioethics 132: Instructor: Lynn Nyhart |
|
| How did today’s biology emerge out of the diverse traditions of agriculture and natural history (bees and trees), biomedicine and molecular biology (germs and genes), which stretch back into the eighteenth century? Examines classic texts and “game-changers” in the history of biology, putting them into broader scientific and social contexts to see how these different ways of knowing intertwined, competed, and yielded novel approaches to the study of life that still shape today’s life sciences. | Cross-listed with History and History of Science
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Monday/Wednesday 9:55 – 10:45 am and discussion sections Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 370: Instructors: Eric Sandgren and Rob Streiffer |
|
| Addresses the science, ethics, history, and communication strategies associated with the use of animals in research. Seeks to identify and employ common ground among those with different perspectives to enable students to make good decisions about this contentious topic. | Cross-listed with Path-Bio
3 cr.; X (Humanities or Natural Science), I (Intermediate), satisfies Com B Tuesday/Thursday 2:30-3:45 pm Prerequisites: Com A |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructor: Dana P. Landress |
|
| What is public health and who is responsible for insuring the public health? If the state is responsible for public health, how far can the state go to insure the public welfare (and whose welfare counts)? Is there a way to reconcile the collective well-being with individual rights? This course considers the ways in which Americans have answered these questions from the colonial period through the twenty-first century. Using both primary documents and secondary sources, the course explores how American society has responded to both epidemic diseases (from smallpox to Zika) and to immigrants, how Americans have negotiated the challenges of the environment and the workplace, and how as a society we have considered the implications of such behavioral practices as cigarette smoking, wearing motorcycle helmets, and eating fast food for health outcomes. The course examines both the development of public health administrations (at the local, state and federal level) and the role of the legal system in promoting the public health of Americans.
Graduate students enrolled in 509 must enroll concurrently in MED HIST 709. |
Cross-listed with History of Science
3 credits. B (Biological Science) I (Intermediate) Counts as LAS credit (L&S) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 525: Instructor: Caroline Hensley |
|
| Explores how a humanistic perspective can broaden our understanding of health and medicine. Specifically, we will examine the role of language and culture in the creation and circulation of biomedical knowledge; our lived experiences with illness (physical and mental); the intricate intersections of race, gender, sexuality, disability and medicine; the political dimensions of diagnosis, disease, and epidemics, and the role that fiction, creative non-fiction, comics, and film play in shaping our experiences with health and medicine as health care providers and as patients. The course does not assume any background in science or medicine. One of our recurrent topics, in fact, will be to consider how non-experts interact with medicine and its technical vocabularies. Although the primary objective of the course is to understand the cultural, social, and political dimensions of health and medicine, a secondary objective is for students to become more savvy patients and, for the few students who might emerge on the other side of the stethoscope one day, more well-rounded health care professionals. | Cross-listed with English and History of Science
3 cr.; H Humanities, C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Declared in Health and the Humanities Certificate |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 532: Instructor: Judith A. Houck |
|
| Perhaps it all started with the nature-nurture debate. By dividing the living world into biology (flesh, blood, genes, hormones, germs) and culture (environment, politics, tradition, commerce, history), we have come to regard bodies as objects immune to historical forces. This course challenges this understanding of bodies. By focusing primarily on American bodies in the 19th and 20th centuries, this course demonstrates that human bodies have social and cultural histories. The lived experience and cultural meanings of human bodies are dependent on their social settings. Biology is surely not irrelevant to bodily experience. But the interpretation and valuation of biology, indeed what is considered biological, change over time. This course will highlight the social values placed on different bodies and the changing social expectations bodies create. This course will pay particular attention to the following questions: How have cultural and social changes in American history influenced the meaning and experience of bodies? How have attempts to establish social status and difference focused on bodies? How has the social and economic value of bodies differed according to race, class, sex, and “fitness?” How has a focus on bodies individualized social problems? | Cross-listed History of Science and with Gender and Women’s Studies
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 9:30 – 10:45 am Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructor: Rob Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from medical procedures and aspects of health care such as abortion, genetic screening, paternalism, informed consent, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, and human subjects research. (This course does meet the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s requirement for a writing-intensive course as described at https://www.med.wisc.edu/education/md-program/admissions/premedical-requirements/.) | Cross listed with History of Science and Population Health
3 credits. Z (Humanities or Social Science) I (Intermediate) Tuesday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Directed study projects as arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Consent of Instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 709: Instructor: Dana P. Landress |
|
| This course for advanced students focuses on the recent historiography of American public health. See Medical History and Bioethics 509. | Not cross-listed
1 cr. Day/Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate/professional standing and concurrent enrollment in HIST SCI/MED HIST 509 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructor: Karola V. Kreitmair and J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| Survey in bioethics aimed at students in the health sciences. Topics to include a mix of important perennial issues and emerging problems. | Not cross-listed
1 credit Tuesdays 5:30 – 7:00 pm, February 26 – May 3 Prerequisites: Declared in Medicine program |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 740: Instructors: Dipesh Navsaria and Eben Schwartz |
|
| Narrative medicine is the practice of using stories to understand health and illness in the context of people’s lives. Whether through fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, text or graphics, giving voice to the stories of patients and caregivers allows their experiences to be heard, made sense of, and valued. Learning to listen to others and to express one’s own vulnerabilities are valuable tools for all health practitioners, but they are especially valuable in the context of public health. The scope of public health interventions encourages practitioners to think in terms of populations, but efforts to improve quality of life through prevention must ultimately be grounded in individual lives. Explore how narrative medicine techniques can enrich the practice of public health, both through the power of listening to stories to understand how individuals experience health and through the power of telling stories to mobilize communities. | Not cross-listed
2 cr. ONLINE; Monday-Friday, 2:30 – 5:30 pm, January 3 – January 15 Prerequisite: MED Professional or declared in Physician Assistant, Nursing, Physical Therapy, Pharmacy, or Genetic Counselor Studies |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 741: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| Opportunity for medical students to analyze ethical dimensions of population-level efforts to protect and promote health. Gain understanding of different ethical frameworks, their theoretical underpinnings, and their prospects for resolving real-world policy dilemmas in the context of medicine and public health. Hone the craft of constructing ethical arguments and foreseeing and responding to potential objections.. | Not cross-listed
2 credits, Enrollment limited to Professional Medical Students ONLINE; Monday-Friday, 2:55pm – 5:00pm. April 10 – April 23 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 744: Instructors: Jessica Babal and Liana Eskola |
|
| Introduction to the medical humanities and their application to clinical practice, utilizing a variety of humanistic approaches, drawing from history, philosophy, anthropology, literary studies, and religious studies. Engage with a variety of forms of expression, including essays, poetry, film, podcasts, music, and visual art. These humanistic approaches complement the science-focused approach of contemporary medical education by enhancing students’ ability to offer more compassionate and culturally competent care, and helping students build resiliency through using artistic forms of expression to process their experiences. Engage with the medical humanities through a different theme, such as the doctor-patient relationship, death and dying, or healing and wholeness. | Not cross-listed
2 credits, Enrollment limited to Professional Medical Students ONLINE; Monday-Friday, February 27 – March 12 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 745: Instructor: Karola V. Kreitmair |
|
| Opportunity for third- and fourth-year medical students to gain appreciation of how ethical issues in clinical practice affect public health outcomes. In order to understand the complex interplay between public health and clinical care, students will gain an understanding of the ethical frameworks and practices that are employed in medicine. Develop the ability to identify the ethically salient features of a patient case and to employ ethical analysis to generate recommendations that improve public health outcomes. | Not cross-listed
2 cr. In Person, Monday-Friday, January 3 – January 15 Prerequisites: Declared in Medicine, Nursing, or Physician Assistant program |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 746: Instructors: Pablo Gómez and Susan Lederer |
|
| Examine ideas about race and ethnicity and their relationship to the history of “Western” medicine and science. Analyze the role of social, economic, cultural, and political developments in the shaping of scientific and medical notions of race and bodily difference. Study how skin color (and other elements of “racial identity”) has influenced the experiences of patients and populations, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers. Discuss how conceptions of race have shaped both the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past three hundred years, and the structure of medical institutions in the United States. Topics include the origins of racial classification, race and colonialism, the health and medical care of the enslaved, the use of enslaved people as research subjects, the history of racial disparities in medicine, structural racism of the medical establishment, race and reproduction, and the struggle for justice in health care during the past few decades. | Not cross-listed
2 credits, Enrollment limited to Professional Medical Students ONLINE; Monday-Friday, February 13 – February 26 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 750: Instructors: Gregg Mitman and Pablo Gómez |
|
| Explore national and international health projects aimed to address infectious disease epidemics in the context of changing ideas about human difference, the shifting economic and socio-political dimensions of international health, and the history of migration. Using a range of sources from historical documents, social science, films, and biomedical research, explore circumstances linking ideas about “alien” people (a term historically used to talk about enslaved people, Native Americans, minorities, and immigrants), and “plagues.” Examine the relationship between ideas about disease and migration, risk factors and disease patterns related to migration, migrant populations’ access to health-care resources, perceived threats of infectious diseases related to migrant populations and the ways such threats have shaped medical theories, and the institutional landscape of global health. | Not cross-listed
2 cr. ONLINE; Monday-Friday, April 24 – May 7 Prerequisites: MED SC-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Independent research and writing for graduate students under the supervision of a faculty member. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Consent of Instructor |
Fall 2022
|
Medical History and Bioethics 275: Instructor: Pablo Gomez |
|
| This course surveys the medical and scientific constructions of ideas about race and ethnicity since the eighteenth century. We will place the development of racial theories of sickness and health in a broad social and political context – and, in particular, explain the medical salience of race in the setting of slavery and colonialism. Discussions will focus primarily on North America and Europe, but will also explore the making of knowledge about race in global settings. | Crosslisted with Afro-American Studies, History of Science
3 cr.; Z Humanities or Social Science, C (L&S), E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday, 2:25 – 3:15 pm and discussion sections Prerequisites: None, open to Freshmen |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the core ethical issues in clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation, including the pending changes to the Common Rule. | Not cross-listed
1 credit; Advanced Wednesdays, 4:00 – 6:00 pm Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Directed study projects as arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 729: Instructors: Karola Kreitmair and Paul Kelleher |
|
| Opportunity to learn and employ foundational methods and principles of bioethics. Gain an understanding of modes of argument in bioethics and hone the craft of analyzing and constructing ethical arguments, and foreseeing and responding to potential objections. | Not cross-listed
1 credit; Professional Tuesdays, 5:30 – 7:00 pm (September 26 – November 18) Prerequisites: Declared in Medicine program |
Medical History and Bioethics 742: Instructor: Paul Kelleher |
|||||
| Understand and analyze the U.S. health care system through the lens of ethical criticisms made by and on behalf of the diverse populations it serves. Gain understanding of philosophical debates over universal health insurance coverage, fair health care financing, effective cost-containment, and rationing. Hone the craft of constructing ethical arguments, and foreseeing and responding to potential objections. | Not cross-listed
2 cr.; Professional Online; Monday-Friday, 2:55 – 5:00 pm (October 10 – October 21) Prerequisites: MED SC-M 810, 811, 812, and 813. |
||||
|
Medical History and Bioethics 750: Instructors: Pablo Gomez and Susan Lederer |
|
| Explore national and international health projects aimed to address infectious disease epidemics in the context of changing ideas about human difference, the shifting economic and socio-political dimensions of international health, and the history of migration. Using a range of sources from historical documents, social science, films, and biomedical research, explore circumstances linking ideas about “alien” people (a term historically used to talk about enslaved people, Native Americans, minorities, and immigrants), and “plagues.” Examine the relationship between ideas about disease and migration, risk factors and disease patterns related to migration, migrant populations’ access to health-care resources, perceived threats of infectious diseases related to migrant populations and the ways such threats have shaped medical theories, and the institutional landscape of global health. | Not cross-listed
2 cr. Professional Online; MTWRF (November 7 – November 18) Prerequisites: MED SC-M 810, 811, 812, and 813. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Independent research and writing for graduate students under the supervision of a faculty member. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; Time to be arranged Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor |
Summer 2022
|
Medical History and Bioethics 132: Instructor: TBA |
|
| How did today’s biology emerge out of the diverse traditions of agriculture and natural history (bees and trees), biomedicine and molecular biology (germs and genes), which stretch back into the eighteenth century? Examines classic texts and “game-changers” in the history of biology, putting them into broader scientific and social contexts to see how these different ways of knowing intertwined, competed, and yielded novel approaches to the study of life that still shape today’s life sciences. | Cross-listed with History and History of Science
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Online Course: June 20 – July 31 Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: TBA |
|
| A survey of different conceptions of how the body as a site of sickness has been understood from Antiquity to contemporary medicine. Includes consideration of the origins and evolution of public health, the changing social role of healers, and the emergence of the modern “standardized” body in health and illness. | Cross-listed with History of Science
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts as Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Online Course: May 31 – July 24 Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Directed study projects as arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Independent research and writing for graduate students under the supervision of a faculty member. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; Time to be arranged Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor |
Spring 2022
|
Medical History and Bioethics 213: Instructor: Vaishn Tripuraneni |
|
| Provides an introduction to the intersections of health and environment on a global scale. Exposes students to a range of problems in global environmental health, including climate change, disease ecology, and the globalization of disease. | Cross-listed with Environmental Studies
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 370: Instructors: Eric Sandgren and Rob Streiffer |
|
| Addresses the science, ethics, history, and communication strategies associated with the use of animals in research. Seeks to identify and employ common ground among those with different perspectives to enable students to make good decisions about this contentious topic. | Cross-listed with Path-Bio
3 cr.; X (Humanities or Natural Science), I (Intermediate), satisfies Com B Tuesday/Thursday 2:30-3:45 pm Prerequisites: Com A |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 515: Instructor: Visiting Professor Richard Dees |
|
| Focuses on ethical issues implicated in a population-level approach to disease prevention and health promotion. Explores prominent theoretical approaches to public health ethics and engages with several ethical tensions. Example issues may include: the use of coercive or intrusive public health measures; paternalism in public health; the extent to which societies should hold individuals responsible for their health conditions; the need to decide who receives life-saving treatment or vaccination; ethical issues in international pharmaceutical research; climate change and intergenerational justice. | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 cr.; Humanities, A (Advanced) Monday/Wednesday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 525: Instructor: Anne C. Vila |
|
| Explores how a humanistic perspective can broaden our understanding of health and medicine. Specifically, we will examine the role of language and culture in the creation and circulation of biomedical knowledge; our lived experiences with illness (physical and mental); the intricate intersections of race, gender, sexuality, disability and medicine; the political dimensions of diagnosis, disease, and epidemics, and the role that fiction, creative non-fiction, comics, and film play in shaping our experiences with health and medicine as health care providers and as patients. The course does not assume any background in science or medicine. One of our recurrent topics, in fact, will be to consider how non-experts interact with medicine and its technical vocabularies. Although the primary objective of the course is to understand the cultural, social, and political dimensions of health and medicine, a secondary objective is for students to become more savvy patients and, for the few students who might emerge on the other side of the stethoscope one day, more well-rounded health care professionals. | Cross-listed with English and History of Science
3 cr.; H Humanities, C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Declared in Health and the Humanities Certificate |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructor: Rob Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from medical procedures and aspects of health care such as abortion, genetic screening, paternalism, informed consent, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, and human subjects research. (This course does meet the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s requirement for a writing-intensive course as described at https://www.med.wisc.edu/education/md-program/admissions/premedical-requirements/.) | Cross listed with History of Science and Population Health
3 credits. Z (Humanities or Social Science) I (Intermediate) Tuesday 1:00 – 2:15 pm, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Directed study projects as arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Consent of Instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructor: Karola Kreitmair |
|
| Topics-based survey course in bioethics aimed at students in the health sciences. Topics to include a mix of important perennial issues and emerging problems | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Professional ONLINE; Tuesdays 5:30 – 7:00 pm, March 1 – May 3 Prerequisites: Declared in Medicine program |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 740: Instructors: Eben Schwartz and Dipesh Navsaria |
|
| Narrative medicine is the practice of using stories to understand health and illness in the context of people’s lives. Whether through fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, text or graphics, giving voice to the stories of patients and caregivers allows their experiences to be heard, made sense of, and valued. Learning to listen to others and to express one’s own vulnerabilities are valuable tools for all health practitioners, but they are especially valuable in the context of public health. The scope of public health interventions encourages practitioners to think in terms of populations, but efforts to improve quality of life through prevention must ultimately be grounded in individual lives. Explore how narrative medicine techniques can enrich the practice of public health, both through the power of listening to stories to understand how individuals experience health and through the power of telling stories to mobilize communities. | Not cross-listed
2 cr. ONLINE; Monday-Friday, 2:30 – 5:30 pm, January 3 – January 16, 2022 Prerequisite: MED Professional or declared in Physician Assistant, Nursing, Physical Therapy, Pharmacy, or Genetic Counselor Studies |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 741: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| Opportunity for medical students to analyze ethical dimensions of population-level efforts to protect and promote health. Gain understanding of different ethical frameworks, their theoretical underpinnings, and their prospects for resolving real-world policy dilemmas in the context of medicine and public health. Hone the craft of constructing ethical arguments and foreseeing and responding to potential objections.. | Not cross-listed
2 credits, Enrollment limited to Professional Medical Students ONLINE; Monday-Friday, 2:55pm – 5:00pm. April 11 – April 24, 2022 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 744: Instructors: Jessica Babal and Liana Eskola |
|
| Introduction to the medical humanities and their application to clinical practice, utilizing a variety of humanistic approaches, drawing from history, philosophy, anthropology, literary studies, and religious studies. Engage with a variety of forms of expression, including essays, poetry, film, podcasts, music, and visual art. These humanistic approaches complement the science-focused approach of contemporary medical education by enhancing students’ ability to offer more compassionate and culturally competent care, and helping students build resiliency through using artistic forms of expression to process their experiences. Engage with the medical humanities through a different theme, such as the doctor-patient relationship, death and dying, or healing and wholeness. | Not cross-listed
2 credits, Enrollment limited to Professional Medical Students ONLINE; Monday-Friday, March 28 – April 10, 2022 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 746: Instructors: Susan Lederer and Pablo Gomez |
|
| Examine ideas about race and ethnicity and their relationship to the history of “Western” medicine and science. Analyze the role of social, economic, cultural, and political developments in the shaping of scientific and medical notions of race and bodily difference. Study how skin color (and other elements of “racial identity”) has influenced the experiences of patients and populations, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers. Discuss how conceptions of race have shaped both the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past three hundred years, and the structure of medical institutions in the United States. Topics include the origins of racial classification, race and colonialism, the health and medical care of the enslaved, the use of enslaved people as research subjects, the history of racial disparities in medicine, structural racism of the medical establishment, race and reproduction, and the struggle for justice in health care during the past few decades. | Not cross-listed
2 credits, Enrollment limited to Professional Medical Students ONLINE; Monday-Friday, February 14 – February 27, 2022 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 750: Instructors: Gregg Mitman and Richard Keller |
|
| Explore national and international health projects aimed to address infectious disease epidemics in the context of changing ideas about human difference, the shifting economic and socio-political dimensions of international health, and the history of migration. Using a range of sources from historical documents, social science, films, and biomedical research, explore circumstances linking ideas about “alien” people (a term historically used to talk about enslaved people, Native Americans, minorities, and immigrants), and “plagues.” Examine the relationship between ideas about disease and migration, risk factors and disease patterns related to migration, migrant populations’ access to health-care resources, perceived threats of infectious diseases related to migrant populations and the ways such threats have shaped medical theories, and the institutional landscape of global health. | Not cross-listed
2 cr. ONLINE; Monday-Friday, April 11 – April 24, 2022 Prerequisites: MED SC-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Independent research and writing for graduate students under the supervision of a faculty member. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Consent of Instructor |
Fall 2021
|
Medical History and Bioethics 275: Instructor: Pablo Gomez |
|
| This course surveys the medical and scientific constructions of ideas about race and ethnicity since the eighteenth century. We will place the development of racial theories of sickness and health in a broad social and political context – and, in particular, explain the medical salience of race in the setting of slavery and colonialism. Discussions will focus primarily on North America and Europe, but will also explore the making of knowledge about race in global settings. | Crosslisted with Afro-American Studies, History of Science
3 cr.; Z Humanities or Social Science, C (L&S), E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM Prerequisites: None, open to Freshmen |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| What is public health and who is responsible for insuring the public health? If the state is responsible for public health, how far can the state go to insure the public welfare (and whose welfare counts)? Is there a way to reconcile the collective well-being with individual rights? This course considers the ways in which Americans have answered these questions from the colonial period through the twenty-first century. Using both primary documents and secondary sources, the course explores how American society has responded to both epidemic diseases (from smallpox to Zika) and to immigrants, how Americans have negotiated the challenges of the environment and the workplace, and how as a society we have considered the implications of such behavioral practices as cigarette smoking, wearing motorcycle helmets, and eating fast food for health outcomes. The course examines both the development of public health administrations (at the local, state and federal level) and the role of the legal system in promoting the public health of Americans.
Graduate students registered in 509 must register concurrently in MHB 709. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits. B (Biological Science) I (Intermediate) Counts as LAS credit (L&S) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM Prerequisites: Junior status or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 534: Instructor: Karola V. Kreitmair |
|
| What is the mind? Today, most philosophers and neuroscientists believe it is, in one way or another, just the brain. Brain research is progressing at a staggering pace. Neuroimaging technology seems to be closing in on ‘thought identification’, i.e. determining an individual’s thought content merely by scanning the brain. Do we have a right to keep our thoughts private or is it permissible to use imaging technologies, perhaps in judicial settings, to identify someone’s thoughts? What happens to our concepts of moral responsibility when a brain scan reveals abnormalities in the brain? Do these findings have bearing on our understanding of free will? Simple drugs can prevent the forming of memories of painful events. Should we take these drugs to shield ourselves from traumatic memories or is it good for us to remember unpleasant events in order to learn and grow from them? Neurotechnology and pharmacology that enhances cognition is advancing rapidly. Is manipulating our brains into smarter, more efficient ones ethical? Neurowearables allow us to track and interfere with brain activity. What does this mean for how we live our everyday lives? And what happens to the massive amounts of brain data generated? Patients are surviving severe brain injuries with massive neurological damage and unclear levels of preserved conscious experience. What is the ethically appropriate decision regarding the use of technology and life-sustaining treatments for these individuals? Armed with a foundation in ethical theory and philosophical methodology, we will consider these questions and others like them. While this course requires no previous knowledge of philosophy or neuroscience, it is designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 cr.; Humanities, I (Intermediate) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 -2:15 PM Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the core ethical issues in clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation, including the pending changes to the Common Rule. | Not cross-listed
1 credit; Advanced Wednesdays, 4:00 – 6:00 pm Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 553: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| Intense concern over the burgeoning of emerging infectious diseases–along with the renewed vigor of known epidemics-has heightened medical, media, and popular attention to the international dimensions of health in a globalizing society. Yet historians have long recognized the “microbial unification of the world” as a phenomenon that dates at least to the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of historical and anthropological materials and methods, this course explores the history of public health and medicine as international phenomena, concentrating chiefly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specific topics include the connections between global pandemics such as cholera and plague to European colonial expansion; the rise of international aid organizations; historical and contemporary anxieties about global migration and the spread of disease; and the international dimensions of a global medical marketplace. Particular themes include the connection between culture and medical ideas and practices; and the tensions of practicing medicine in multi-cultural settings.
Graduate/Professional students registered in Med Hist/Hist of Sci/Pop Hlth 553 must register concurrently in MHB 753. |
Cross listed with History of Science and Population Health
3 credits. Z (Humanities or Social Science) I (Intermediate) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Robert K. Streiffer |
|
| This course is for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. It is an in-depth study of a selection of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology to microorganisms, plants, non-human animals, and human beings. Topics vary but will typically include: intrinsic objections to genetic engineering (GE); doomsday arguments and the precautionary principle; political philosophy and the regulation of GE foods; the ethics of labeling GE food; environmental ethics and GE crops; the humanitarian argument for agricultural biotechnology; animal welfare, animal rights, and GE animals; human/animal chimeras; human cloning; human enhancement; and intellectual property and biotechnology. We will aim at a discussion that is informed both by empirical research and by work done in ethical theory, political philosophy, and other relevant disciplines, and whose character is rigorous, clear, nuanced, and unbiased. | Cross-listed with Agronomy, Philosophy, and Community and Environmental Sociology
3 credits; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. I Intermediate. Tuesday and Thursday, 2:30-3:45 PM Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
|
Medical History and Bioethics 709: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| This course for advanced students focuses on the recent historiography of American public health. See MHB 509. | Not cross-listed
1 cr. Day/Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Medical Hist/Hist of Science 509. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 742: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| Understand and analyze the U.S. health care system through the lens of ethical criticisms made by and on behalf of the diverse populations it serves. Gain understanding of philosophical debates over universal health insurance coverage, fair health care financing, effective cost-containment, and rationing. Hone the craft of constructing ethical arguments, and foreseeing and responding to potential objections. | Not cross-listed
2 cr.; Professional Online; Monday-Friday, 2:55 – 5:00 pm (October 11 – October 24) Prerequisites: MED SC-M 810, 811, 812, and 813. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 750: Instructors: Pablo Gomez and Susan Lederer |
|
| Explore national and international health projects aimed to address infectious disease epidemics in the context of changing ideas about human difference, the shifting economic and socio-political dimensions of international health, and the history of migration. Using a range of sources from historical documents, social science, films, and biomedical research, explore circumstances linking ideas about “alien” people (a term historically used to talk about enslaved people, Native Americans, minorities, and immigrants), and “plagues.” Examine the relationship between ideas about disease and migration, risk factors and disease patterns related to migration, migrant populations’ access to health-care resources, perceived threats of infectious diseases related to migrant populations and the ways such threats have shaped medical theories, and the institutional landscape of global health. | Not cross-listed
2 cr. Online; MTWRF (November 8 – November 19) Prerequisites: MED SC-M 810, 811, 812, and 813. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 753: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| See MHB 553. Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature.
Graduate/Professional students registered in Med Hist/Hist of Sci/Pop Hlth 553 must register concurrently in MHB 753. |
Not cross-listed
1 credit Day/Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status and concurrent registration in Med Hist 553, or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
|
Summer 2021
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Suzanna Schulert |
|
| A survey of different conceptions of how the body as a site of sickness has been understood from Antiquity to contemporary medicine. Includes consideration of the origins and evolution of public health, the changing social role of healers, and the emergence of the modern “standardized” body in health and illness. | Cross listed with History of Science
3 credits; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Online course, May 24 – July 18 Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. For honors credit consent required in Hist Sci/Hist Med 284 or consent of instructor |
Spring 2021
|
Medical History and Bioethics 213: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| The course provides an introduction to the intersections of health and environment on a global scale. Exposes students to a range of problems in global environmental health, including climate change, disease ecology, and the globalization of disease. | Cross-listed with Environmental Studies
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Online; Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm, plus discussions Prerequisites: None. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 344: Instructor: Rob Streiffer |
|
| There are a host of ethical issues related to food production, distribution, consumption, and policy. These include animal welfare, animal rights, vegetarianism, and veganism; the environmental impact of agriculture; the treatment of workers in agriculture, the prospects for ethical reform of agriculture; the ethical responsibilities of corporate and industry actors in the food supply; and labeling issues surrounding the use of modern biotechnology in the food supply. Some issues are more theoretical, such as whether certain individuals affected by agriculture deserve direct moral consideration. Other are more practical, such as how to feed a growing global population and how to reduce the diet-related harms caused by our current food system. We will begin with a brief survey of ethical theories and methods of ethical reasoning, and then explore, from both personal and policy perspectives, several food ethics issues. Among the aims of the course are the goals of helping you think critically about the ethically relevant impacts of your own food choices and improving your understanding of and ability to communicate about ethical issues implicated in food systems. | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 cr., Humanities or Social Sci, Intermediate Online; Monday/Wednesday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Sophomore Standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 525: Instructor: Nicole Nelson |
|
| Explores how a humanistic perspective can broaden our understanding of health and medicine. Specifically, we will examine the role of language and culture in the creation and circulation of biomedical knowledge; our lived experiences with illness (physical and mental); the intricate intersections of race, gender, sexuality, disability and medicine; the political dimensions of diagnosis, disease, and epidemics, and the role that fiction, creative non-fiction, comics, and film play in shaping our experiences with health and medicine as health care providers and as patients. The course does not assume any background in science or medicine. One of our recurrent topics, in fact, will be to consider how non-experts interact with medicine and its technical vocabularies. Although the primary objective of the course is to understand the cultural, social, and political dimensions of health and medicine, a secondary objective is for students to become more savvy patients and, for the few students who might emerge on the other side of the stethoscope one day, more well-rounded health care professionals. | Cross-listed with English and History of Science
3 cr.; H Humanities, C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Online; Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Declared in Health and the Humanities Certificate. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 531: Instructor: Judith Houck |
|
| Women and Health in American History examines the health issues women have faced and their responses to them from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. It explores the personal experiences and the medical views of women’s life-cycle events, the role of women as health care providers and activists, and the effect of gender on the perception of illness. | Cross-listed with Gender&Women’s Studies and History of Science
3 cr. B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate). Honors-only course. Online; Tuesday/Thursday 9:30 – 10:45 am Prerequisites: Junior status or higher (including graduate and professional careers). Excludes university Special and Guest students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructor: Rob Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from medical procedures and aspects of health care such as abortion, genetic screening, paternalism, informed consent, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, and human subjects research. (This course does meet the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s requirement for a writing-intensive course as described at https://www.med.wisc.edu/education/md-program/admissions/premedical-requirements/.) | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Online; Tuesday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm, plus discussions Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 615: Instructors: Anita Bhattacharyya and Kris Saha |
|
| This course is designed to introduce graduate and upper-level undergraduate science, engineering, and medical students working in regenerative medicine research to the key ethical, policy and social issues relevant to the field. Primary scientific and policy documents will be used as resources as well as analyses of current social and political environments.
Topics include (among others): The history of legal & political disputes over embryonic stem cell research; understanding public responses & the media; responsible conduct of science for stem cell researchers; treatments outside of clinical trials; social & ethical issues in translational research & commercialization. |
Cross-listed with Cell and Regenerative Biology
3 cr., A (Advanced) Online; Wednesdays; 1:20 – 3:30 pm Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional Student. Please note: All students must have consent of instructor to enroll. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructor: Karola Kreitmair |
|
| Topics-based survey course in bioethics aimed at students in the health sciences. Topics to include a mix of important perennial issues and emerging problems. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Professional Online; Tuesday 5:30 – 7:00 pm (March 1 through April 30) Prerequisites: Declared in Medicine program. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 742: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| Understand and analyze the U.S. health care system through the lens of ethical criticisms made by and on behalf of the diverse populations it serves. Gain understanding of philosophical debates over universal health insurance coverage, fair health care financing, effective cost-containment, and rationing. Hone the craft of constructing ethical arguments, and foreseeing and responding to potential objections. | Not cross-listed
2 cr.; Professional Online; Monday-Friday, 2:55 – 5:00 pm (April 12 – April 25) Prerequisites: MED SC-M 810, 811, 812, and 813. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 744: Instructor: Nicole Nelson |
|
| Introduction to the medical humanities and their application to clinical practice, utilizing a variety of humanistic approaches, drawing from history, philosophy, anthropology, literary studies, and religious studies. Engage with a variety of forms of expression, including essays, poetry, film, podcasts, music, and visual art. These humanistic approaches complement the science-focused approach of contemporary medical education by enhancing students’ ability to offer more compassionate and culturally competent care, and helping students build resiliency through using artistic forms of expression to process their experiences. Engage with the medical humanities through a different theme, such as the doctor-patient relationship, death and dying, or healing and wholeness. | Not cross-listed
2 cr.; Professional Online; Monday-Friday, time to be determined (March 1 – March 14) Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812 and 813. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 750: Instructors: Pablo Gomez and Susan Lederer |
|
| Explore national and international health projects aimed to address infectious disease epidemics in the context of changing ideas about human difference, the shifting economic and socio-political dimensions of international health, and the history of migration. Using a range of sources from historical documents, social science, films, and biomedical research, explore circumstances linking ideas about “alien” people (a term historically used to talk about enslaved people, Native Americans, minorities, and immigrants), and “plagues.” Examine the relationship between ideas about disease and migration, risk factors and disease patterns related to migration, migrant populations’ access to health-care resources, perceived threats of infectious diseases related to migrant populations and the ways such threats have shaped medical theories, and the institutional landscape of global health. | Not cross-listed
2 cr. Online; MTWRF (February 1 – February 14) Prerequisites: MED SC-M 810, 811, 812, and 813. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
|
Fall 2020
|
Medical History and Bioethics 132: Instructor: Lynn Nyhart |
|
| How did today’s biology emerge out of the diverse traditions of agriculture and natural history (bees and trees, biomedicine and molecular biology, germs and genes) that stretch back into the eighteenth century? In this course, we examine classic texts and “game-changes” in the history of biology, putting them into broader scientific and social contexts to see how these different ways of knowing intertwined, competed, and yielded novel approaches to the study of life that still shape today’s life sciences. | Cross-listed with History and History of Science
3 credits; S (Social Science) E (Elementary) Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S ONLINE, Monday/Wednesday 1:20 – 2:10 pm, and ONLINE or in-person discussion sections Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 231: Instructor: Pablo Gomez |
|
| This interdisciplinary course will provide students with analytical tools for the critical examination of the social, cultural, political and economic determinants of health conditions and medical practice. It will use primary and secondary historical readings, media reports, films, ethnographic and medical case studies, material culture, and literature to introduce students to basic concepts of global health, bioethics, medical anthropology, and the history of biomedicine, public health and disease in the United States. The course will feature weekly invited lectures from a number of experts coming from the Medical History and Bioethics department. It will examine urgent topics such as the role that race, national origin, gender, sexuality, religion, socio economic status play in shaping ideas about disease, health and body normativity, and how they have modeled medical practice and public health policies. We will pay special attention to how these factors determine how patients and providers experience and ideate disease and treatment, and how they respond to specific health care policies. The course will make emphasis on the important role that conditions of structural violence and inequality play as determinants of health conditions in a globalized world. | Cross-listed with Anthropology
3 credits. Z (Humanities or Social Science) E (Elementary) ONLINE, Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 534: Instructor: Karola V. Kreitmair |
|
| What is the mind? Today, most philosophers and neuroscientists believe it is, in one way or another, just the brain. Brain research is progressing at a staggering pace. Neuroimaging technology seems to be closing in on ‘thought identification’, i.e. determining an individual’s thought content merely by scanning the brain. Do we have a right to keep our thoughts private or is it permissible to use imaging technologies, perhaps in judicial settings, to identify someone’s thoughts? What happens to our concepts of moral responsibility when a brain scan reveals abnormalities in the brain? Do these findings have bearing on our understanding of free will? Simple drugs can prevent the forming of memories of painful events. Should we take these drugs to shield ourselves from traumatic memories or is it good for us to remember unpleasant events in order to learn and grow from them? Neurotechnology and pharmacology that enhances cognition is advancing rapidly. Is manipulating our brains into smarter, more efficient ones ethical? Neurowearables allow us to track and interfere with brain activity. What does this mean for how we live our everyday lives? And what happens to the massive amounts of brain data generated? Patients are surviving severe brain injuries with massive neurological damage and unclear levels of preserved conscious experience. What is the ethically appropriate decision regarding the use of technology and life-sustaining treatments for these individuals? Armed with a foundation in ethical theory and philosophical methodology, we will consider these questions and others like them. While this course requires no previous knowledge of philosophy or neuroscience, it is designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 cr.; Humanities, I (Intermediate) ONLINE, Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 -2:15 PM Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the core ethical issues in clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation, including the pending changes to the Common Rule. | Not cross-listed
1 credit; Advanced ONLINE, Wednesdays, 4:00 – 6:00 pm Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Robert K. Streiffer |
|
| This course is for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. It is an in-depth study of a selection of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology to microorganisms, plants, non-human animals, and human beings. Topics vary but will typically include: intrinsic objections to genetic engineering (GE); doomsday arguments and the precautionary principle; political philosophy and the regulation of GE foods; the ethics of labeling GE food; environmental ethics and GE crops; the humanitarian argument for agricultural biotechnology; animal welfare, animal rights, and GE animals; human/animal chimeras; human cloning; human enhancement; and intellectual property and biotechnology. We will aim at a discussion that is informed both by empirical research and by work done in ethical theory, political philosophy, and other relevant disciplines, and whose character is rigorous, clear, nuanced, and unbiased. | Cross-listed with Agronomy, Philosophy, and Community and Environmental Sociology
3 credits; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. I Intermediate. ONLINE, Monday/Wednesday 2:30 – 3:45 PM Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
|
Medical History and Bioethics 741: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| Opportunity for medical students to analyze ethical dimensions of population-level efforts to protect and promote health. Gain understanding of different ethical frameworks, their theoretical underpinnings, and their prospects for resolving real-world policy dilemmas in the context of medicine and public health. Hone the craft of constructing ethical arguments, and foreseeing and responding to potential objections. | Not cross-listed
2 credits, Enrollment limited to Professional Medical Students ONLINE Monday-Friday, 2:55pm through 5:00pm. Meets October 12 through October 25, 2020 Prerequisites: MED SCI-M 810, 811, 812, and 813. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| This seminar explores how patients, physicians and nurses have understood what it means to be alive, dying, and dead over the course of the last two centuries. Readings will consider the legal, cultural, and religious implications of medical interventions at both the beginning and end of life. This includes how determinations of when life begins and when life ends have been made at different times and in different contexts for such medical technologies as in vitro fertilization, elective abortion, organ transplantation, and euthanasia.
In so doing, the course also examines readings that explore the commodification of the body and its parts–living and dead, the procurement of anatomical materials for education, research, and treatment, and the changing medical definitions of death. |
Cross-listed with History of Science
3 credits. A (Advanced) ONLINE, day and time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate/Professional level and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
|
Summer 2020
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Suzanna Schulert |
|
| A survey of different conceptions of how the body as a site of sickness has been understood from Antiquity to contemporary medicine. Includes consideration of the origins and evolution of public health, the changing social role of healers, and the emergence of the modern “standardized” body in health and illness. | Cross listed with History of Science
3 credits; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Online course, May 26 – July 19 Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
|
Spring 2020
|
Medical History and Bioethics 213: Instructor: Monica White |
|
| The course provides an introduction to the intersections of health and environment on a global scale. Exposes students to a range of problems in global environmental health, including climate change, disease ecology, and the globalization of disease. | Cross-listed with Environmental Studies
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm, plus discussions Prerequisites: None. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 331: Instructor: Cara Rock-Singer |
|
| Science, medicine, and religion from antiquity to the present, with emphasis on Western civilization. | Crosslisted with History of Science and Religious Studies.
3 credits. H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Junior Standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 508: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| Medicine in Europe from the 18th century to mid-20th century, investigating changes in disease and demography, state interest in health care, the medical professions, and both scientific and alternative medical ideas. | Crosslisted with History and History of Science
3 cr.; H (Humanities) I (Intermediate) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: Junior standing. Graduate/Professional students must also enroll in Medical History and Bioethics 708. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 523: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| The problem of the 20th century, wrote W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), “is the problem of the color-line.” This course considers the issue of the color line in American medicine over the past two centuries. We will be looking at the ways in which skin color (and other elements of “racial identity”) have influenced the experiences of patients, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers, seeking to document and analyze how conceptions of race have shaped the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past two hundred years. Topics include the origins of racial classification, the health and medical care of slaves, the use of minorities as research subjects, especially the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the history of racial disparities in medicine, and the efforts to integrate the American medical profession. | Cross-listed with History of Science and Afro-American Studies
3 cr.; S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 525: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Explores how a humanistic perspective can broaden our understanding of health and medicine. Specifically, we will examine the role of language and culture in the creation and circulation of biomedical knowledge; our lived experiences with illness (physical and mental); the intricate intersections of race, gender, sexuality, disability and medicine; the political dimensions of diagnosis, disease, and epidemics, and the role that fiction, creative non-fiction, comics, and film play in shaping our experiences with health and medicine as health care providers and as patients. The course does not assume any background in science or medicine. One of our recurrent topics, in fact, will be to consider how non-experts interact with medicine and its technical vocabularies. Although the primary objective of the course is to understand the cultural, social, and political dimensions of health and medicine, a secondary objective is for students to become more savvy patients and, for the few students who might emerge on the other side of the stethoscope one day, more well-rounded health care professionals. | Cross-listed with English and History of Science
3 cr.; H Humanities, C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: Declared in Health and the Humanities Certificate. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructor: Karola V. Kreitmair |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from medical procedures and aspects of health care such as abortion, genetic screening, paternalism, informed consent, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, and human subjects research. (This course does meet the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s requirement for a writing-intensive course as described at https://www.med.wisc.edu/education/md-program/admissions/premedical-requirements/.) | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tuesday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm, plus discussions Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559: Instructor: Robert K. Streiffer |
|
| There are a host of ethical issues related to food production, distribution, consumption, and policy. These include animal welfare, animal rights, vegetarianism, and veganism; the environmental impact of agriculture; the prospects for ethical reform of agriculture; the ethical responsibilities of corporate and industry actors in the food supply; and labeling issues surrounding the use of modern biotechnology in the food supply. Some issues are more theoretical, such as whether certain individuals affected by agriculture deserve direct moral consideration. Other are more practical, such as how to feed a growing global population and how to reduce the diet-related harms caused by our current food system. We will begin with a brief survey of ethical theories and methods of ethical reasoning, and then explore, from both personal and policy perspectives, several food ethics issues. Among the aims of the course are the goals of helping you think critically about the ethically relevant impacts of your own food choices and improving your understanding of and ability to communicate about ethical issues implicated in food systems. | Not cross-listed
3 credits. Z (Humanities or Social Science), A (Advanced) Monday/Wednesday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
|
Medical History and Bioethics 708: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature concerning medicine in Europe from the 18th century to mid-20th century, investigating changes in disease and demography, state interest in health care, and medical professions, and both scientific and alternative medical ideas. | Not cross-listed
1 cr. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate/Professional standing & concurrent registration in Medical History and Bioethics or History, or History of Science 508. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| Topics-based survey course in bioethics aimed at students in the health sciences. Topics to include a mix of important perennial issues and emerging problems. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Professional Tuesday 5:30 – 7:00 pm (meets at HSLC March 3 through April 28) Prerequisites: Declared in Medicine program. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 750: Instructors: Gregg Mitman and Susan Lederer |
|
| Explore national and international health projects aimed to address infectious disease epidemics in the context of changing ideas about human difference, the shifting economic and socio-political dimensions of international health, and the history of migration. Using a range of sources from historical documents, social science, films, and biomedical research, explore circumstances linking ideas about “alien” people (a term historically used to talk about enslaved people, Native Americans, minorities, and immigrants), and “plagues.” Examine the relationship between ideas about disease and migration, risk factors and disease patterns related to migration, migrant populations’ access to health-care resources, perceived threats of infectious diseases related to migrant populations and the ways such threats have shaped medical theories, and the institutional landscape of global health. | Not cross-listed
2 cr. MTWRFSa 6:00AM – 5:00PM Prerequisites: MED SC-M 810, 811, 812, and 813 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
|
Fall 2019
|
Medical History and Bioethics 132: Instructor: Lynn Nyhart |
|
| How did today’s biology emerge out of the diverse traditions of agriculture and natural history (bees and trees, biomedicine and molecular biology, germs and genes) that stretch back into the eighteenth century? In this course, we examine classic texts and “game-changes” in the history of biology, putting them into broader scientific and social contexts to see how these different ways of knowing intertwined, competed, and yielded novel approaches to the study of life that still shape today’s life sciences. | Cross listed with History and History of Science
3 credits; S (Social Science) E (Elementary) Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Monday/Wednesday 1:20 – 2:10 pm and discussion sections Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Suzanna Schulert |
|
| A survey of different conceptions of how the body as a site of sickness has been understood from Antiquity to contemporary medicine. Includes consideration of the origins and evolution of public health, the changing social role of healers, and the emergence of the modern “standardized” body in health and illness. | Cross listed with History of Science
3 credits; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Monday/Wednesday 9:55 – 10:45 am, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 505: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course investigates debates in moral and political philosophy concerning social obligations to provide health care coverage to those within a nation’s borders. For the first part of the course, our main task is to understand prominent accounts of social and distributive justice and to evaluate their implications for health policy. We’ll then consider the moral implications of health disparities facing traditionally marginalized sub-populations. Finally, we’ll investigate various methods of health care rationing, which many believe to be an unavoidable requirement of the need to control health care costs. | Cross listed with Philosophy
3 credits. H (Humanities) A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 9:30 – 10:45 am Prerequisites: Junior status or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the core ethical issues in clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation, including the pending changes to the Common Rule. | Not cross-listed
1 credit; Advanced Wednesdays, 4:00 – 6:00 pm. Class will be held in CLIN SCI CTR G5-152 Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 553: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| Intense concern over the burgeoning of emerging infectious diseases–along with the renewed vigor of known epidemics-has heightened medical, media, and popular attention to the international dimensions of health in a globalizing society. Yet historians have long recognized the “microbial unification of the world” as a phenomenon that dates at least to the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of historical and anthropological materials and methods, this course explores the history of public health and medicine as international phenomena, concentrating chiefly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specific topics include the connections between global pandemics such as cholera and plague to European colonial expansion; the rise of international aid organizations; historical and contemporary anxieties about global migration and the spread of disease; and the international dimensions of a global medical marketplace. Particular themes include the connection between culture and medical ideas and practices; and the tensions of practicing medicine in multi-cultural settings.
Graduate/Professional students registered in Med Hist/Hist of Sci/Pop Hlth 553 must register concurrently in MHB 753. |
Cross listed with History of Science and Population Health
3 credits. Z (Humanities or Social Science) I (Intermediate) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| What does it mean to speak of the “greater good” and how should that idea influence the aims and aspirations of global health movements? In this course we will engage with diverse sources–from philosophy to epidemiology, anthropology, and literature–to address this and many related questions. We will examine the ethical principles that have been said to underlie global health policies, and we will ask how concerns about global health should shape our daily choices. We will ask whether it is moral obligation to be an “effective altruist,” which is someone who is dedicated to giving a great deal to the most effective charities around the world. To what extent is it permissible to prioritize causes that are near to our hearts and houses, when that money could do more good if donated to an organization that does work half a world away? — No prior knowledge of bioethics, philosophy, or global health is required. | Not cross-listed
3 credits. Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Robert K. Streiffer |
|
| This course is for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. It is an in-depth study of a selection of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology to microorganisms, plants, non-human animals, and human beings. Topics vary but will typically include: intrinsic objections to genetic engineering (GE); doomsday arguments and the precautionary principle; political philosophy and the regulation of GE foods; the ethics of labeling GE food; environmental ethics and GE crops; the humanitarian argument for agricultural biotechnology; animal welfare, animal rights, and GE animals; human/animal chimeras; human cloning; human enhancement; and intellectual property and biotechnology. We will aim at a discussion that is informed both by empirical research and by work done in ethical theory, political philosophy, and other relevant disciplines, and whose character is rigorous, clear, nuanced, and unbiased. | Cross-listed with Agronomy, Philosophy, and Community and Environmental Sociology
3 cr.; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. I Intermediate. Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 615: Instructor: Anita Bhattacharyya |
|
| This course is designed to introduce graduate and upper-level undergraduate science, engineering, and medical students working in regenerative medicine research to the key ethical, policy and social issues relevant to the field. Primary scientific and policy documents will be used as resources as well as analyses of current social and political environments.
Topics include (among others): The history of legal & political disputes over embryonic stem cell research; understanding public responses & the media; responsible conduct of science for stem cell researchers; treatments outside of clinical trials; social & ethical issues in translational research & commercialization. This is a classroom course that will meet interactively online with other universities in real-time. |
Not cross-listed
3 cr., A (Advanced) Mondays; 1:20 – 3:25 pm Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional Student. Please note: All students must have consent of instructor to enroll. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
|
Medical History and Bioethics 740: Instructor: Nicole C. Nelson |
|
| Narrative medicine is the practice of using stories to understand health and illness in the context of people’s lives. Whether through fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, text or graphics, giving voice to the stories of patients and caregivers allows their experiences to be heard, made sense of, and valued. Learning to listen to others and to express one’s own vulnerabilities are valuable tools for all health practitioners, but they are especially valuable in the context of public health. The scope of public health interventions encourages practitioners to think in terms of populations, but efforts to improve quality of life through prevention must ultimately be grounded in individual lives. Explore how narrative medicine techniques can enrich the practice of public health, both through the power of listening to stories to understand how individuals experience health and through the power of telling stories to mobilize communities. | Not cross-listed
2 cr. Meets for a 2 week session (9/30/2019 through 10/13/2019) Monday through Friday, 2:30 – 5:30 pm Prerequisite: MED Professional or declared in Physician Assistant, Nursing, Physical Therapy, Pharmacy, or Genetic Counselor Studies. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 753: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| See MHB 553. Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature.
Graduate/Professional students registered in Med Hist/Hist of Sci/Pop Hlth 553 must register concurrently in MHB 753. |
Not cross-listed
1 credit Day/Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status and concurrent registration in Med Hist 553, or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
|
Spring 2019
|
Medical History and Bioethics 213: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| The course provides an introduction to the intersections of health and environment on a global scale. Exposes students to a range of problems in global environmental health, including climate change, disease ecology, and the globalization of disease. | Cross-listed with Environmental Studies
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm, plus discussions Prerequisites: None. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 515: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course focuses on ethical issues implicated in a population-level approach to disease prevention and health promotion. Students will explore prominent theoretical approaches to public health ethics and will engage with several ethical tensions. Issues discussed can include: rival concepts of health equity and their implications for public health priority-setting; the use of coercive or intrusive public health interventions that restrict individual freedom, infringe upon individual privacy, and/or invite individual harm (or risks of harm); the justification of paternalistic measures in societies or sub-populations that seemingly indulge in pleasurable yet unhealthy behaviors; choosing between the identifiable victims we can save with expensive measures here and now and the more numerous unidentifiable victims we could save in the future with the same monetary investment; the trade-offs between maximizing aggregate health benefits and addressing the special needs of vulnerable social sub-groups and individuals; ethical issues in international pharmaceutical research; ethical issues involving vaccination; and a special topic selected each semester. (Likely Spring 2019 special topic: public health, future generations, and climate change policy). | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 credits; H (Humanities) A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 531: Instructor: Judith Houck |
|
| Women and Health in American History examines the health issues women have faced and their responses to them from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. It explores the personal experiences and the medical views of women’s life-cycle events, the role of women as health care providers and activists, and the effect of gender on the perception of illness. | Cross-listed with Gender&Women’s Studies and History of Science
3 credits. B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate). Honors-only course. Tuesday/Thursday 9:30 – 10:45 am Prerequisites: Junior status or higher (including graduate and professional careers). Excludes university Special and Guest students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructor: Robert K. Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from medical procedures and aspects of health care such as abortion, genetic screening, paternalism, informed consent, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, and human subjects research. (This course does meet the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s requirement for a writing-intensive course as described at https://www.med.wisc.edu/education/md-program/admissions/premedical-requirements/.) | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tuesday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm, plus discussions Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 564: Instructor: Pablo Gomez |
|
| This course examines the history of illness, medical practice and public health in Latin America and the Caribbean from the colonial era to the present. Using films, literature, artwork, archaeological studies, historical texts, and medical sources, students will explore the different meanings of disease, body normativity, medical practice, and public health across different historical circumstances in the region. Among other topics, the course will examine the biological exchange that determined the fate of Native Americans and Europeans in the New World; the role religious and socio-cultural attitudes and beliefs about bodies and illness played in shaping early modern Latin American societies; concepts of race and disease for state and nation-building projects in Latin America; US and European programs of medical research and humanitarianism in Latin American and Caribbean nations during the first half of the twentieth century; medical experimentation in Central America; the impact of the AIDS epidemic in the region; international humanitarianism and the rise of state-sponsored systems of health care in Latin American countries. | Cross-listed with History and History of Science
3 cr.; Z (either Humanities or Social Science), A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Junior standing or above. Includes Graduate and Professional level. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course focuses on important ethics controversies arising in the health sciences. It consists of nine lecture/discussions focused on a different topic each week. The course challenges students to view ethical issues from multiple perspectives and encourages interpersonal and interdisciplinary discourse. Topics can include: health care rationing, genetic screening, genetic engineering, organ donation and procurement, paternalism in public health, public health priority-setting, tensions and affinities between different ethical methodologies, and the distinctive tasks facing hospital ethics committees. The course is open to students pursuing a health science degree (e.g. medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physician assistants); others may enroll only with consent of the instructor. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, advanced Tuesday 5:30 – 7:00 pm (meets at HSLC March 5 through April 30) Prerequisites: Limited to Medical Students in their fourth year only. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
|
Fall 2018
|
Medical History and Bioethics 132: Instructor: Lynn Nyhart |
|
| How did today’s biology emerge out of the diverse traditions of agriculture and natural history (bees and trees, biomedicine and molecular biology, germs and genes) that stretch back into the eighteenth century? In this course, we examine classic texts and “game-changes” in the history of biology, putting them into broader scientific and social contexts to see how these different ways of knowing intertwined, competed, and yielded novel approaches to the study of life that still shape today’s life sciences. | Cross listed with History and History of Science
3 credits; S (Social Science) E (Elementary) Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Monday/Wednesday 1:20 – 2:10 pm and discussion sections Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Travis Weisse |
|
| A survey of different conceptions of how the body as a site of sickness has been understood from Antiquity to contemporary medicine. Includes consideration of the origins and evolution of public health, the changing social role of healers, and the emergence of the modern “standardized” body in health and illness. | Cross listed with History of Science
3 credits; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Monday/Wednesday 8:50 – 9:40 am, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 231: Instructor: Pablo Gomez |
|
| This interdisciplinary course will provide students with analytical tools for the critical examination of the social, cultural, political and economic determinants of health conditions and medical practice. It will use primary and secondary historical readings, media reports, films, ethnographic and medical case studies, material culture, and literature to introduce students to basic concepts of global health, bioethics, medical anthropology, and the history of biomedicine, public health and disease in the United States. The course will feature weekly invited lectures from a number of experts coming from the Medical History and Bioethics department. It will examine urgent topics such as the role that race, national origin, gender, sexuality, religion, socio economic status play in shaping ideas about disease, health and body normativity, and how they have modeled medical practice and public health policies. We will pay special attention to how these factors determine how patients and providers experience and ideate disease and treatment, and how they respond to specific health care policies. The course will make emphasis on the important role that conditions of structural violence and inequality play as determinants of health conditions in a globalized world. | Cross-listed with Anthropology
3 credits. Z (Humanities or Social Science) E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 525: Instructor: Jenell Johnson |
|
| Explores how a humanistic perspective can broaden our understanding of health and medicine. Specifically, we will examine the role of language and culture in the creation and circulation of biomedical knowledge; our lived experiences with illness (physical and mental); the intricate intersections of race, gender, sexuality, disability and medicine; the political dimensions of diagnosis, disease, and epidemics, and the role that fiction, creative non-fiction, comics, and film play in shaping our experiences with health and medicine as health care providers and as patients. The course does not assume any background in science or medicine. One of our recurrent topics, in fact, will be to consider how non-experts interact with medicine and its technical vocabularies. Although the primary objective of the course is to understand the cultural, social, and political dimensions of health and medicine, a secondary objective is for students to become more savvy patients and, for the few students who might emerge on the other side of the stethoscope one day, more well-rounded health care professionals. | Cross-listed with English and History of Science
3 cr.; H Humanities, C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Declared in Health and the Humanities Certificate. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 532: Instructor: Judith A. Houck |
|
| Perhaps it all started with the nature-nurture debate. By dividing the living world into biology (flesh, blood, genes, hormones, germs) and culture (environment, politics, tradition, commerce, history), we have come to regard bodies as objects immune to historical forces. This course challenges this understanding of bodies. By focusing primarily on American bodies in the 19th and 20th centuries, this course demonstrates that human bodies have social and cultural histories. The lived experience and cultural meanings of human bodies are dependent on their social settings. Biology is surely not irrelevant to bodily experience. But the interpretation and valuation of biology, indeed what is considered biological, change over time. This course will highlight the social values placed on different bodies and the changing social expectations bodies create. This course will pay particular attention to the following questions: How have cultural and social changes in American history influenced the meaning and experience of bodies? How have attempts to establish social status and difference focused on bodies? How has the social and economic value of bodies differed according to race, class, sex, and “fitness?” How has a focus on bodies individualized social problems? | Cross-listed History of Science and with Gender and Women’s Studies
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 9:30 – 10:45 am Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the core ethical issues in clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation, including the pending changes to the Common Rule. | Not cross-listed
1 credit; Advanced Wednesdays, 4:00 – 6:00 pm. Class will be held in G5/152 CSC Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Robert K. Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology (including genetic engineering, CRISPR/CAS9, cloning and stem cells) to microorganisms, crops, animals, and humans. Readings cover applied ethics, moral theory, political philosophy, the science used in biotechnology, and current regulations governing its use. | Cross-listed with Agronomy, Philosophy, and Community and Environmental Sociology
3 cr.; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. I Intermediate. Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 610: Instructors: Linda F. Hogle and Krishanu Saha |
|
| This course is designed to introduce graduate and upper-level undergraduate science, engineering, and medical students working in regenerative medicine research to the key ethical, policy and social issues relevant to the field. Primary scientific and policy documents will be used as resources as well as analyses of current social and political environments.
Topics include (among others): The history of legal & political disputes over embryonic stem cell research; understanding public responses & the media; responsible conduct of science for stem cell researchers; treatments outside of clinical trials; social & ethical issues in translational research & commercialization. This is a classroom course that will meet interactively online with other universities in real-time. |
Not cross-listed
3 cr., A (Advanced) Wednesdays; 1:20 – 3:15 pm Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional Student. Please note: All students must have consent of instructor to enroll. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. Instructor consent required. |
|
Spring 2018
|
Medical History and Bioethics 133: Instructor: Nicole C. Nelson |
|
| From medical advancements to environmental crises and global food shortages, the life sciences are implicated in some of the most pressing social issues of our time. This course explores events in the history of biology from the mid-twentieth century to today, and examines how developments in this science have shaped and are shaped by society. In the first unit, we investigate the origins of the institutions, technologies, and styles of practice that characterize contemporary biology, such as the use of mice as “model organisms” for understanding human diseases. The second unit examines biological controversies such as the introduction of genetically modified plants into the food supply. The final unit asks how biological facts and theories have been and continue to be used as a source for understanding ourselves. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; Z (either Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Monday/Wednesday 11:00 am Prerequisites: None, open to Freshmen |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 213: Instructor: Monica White |
|
| The course provides an introduction to the intersections of health and environment on a global scale. Exposes students to a range of problems in global environmental health, including climate change, disease ecology, and the globalization of disease. | Crosslisted with Environmental Studies
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 275: Instructor: Pablo Gomez |
|
| This course surveys the medical and scientific constructions of ideas about race and ethnicity since the eighteenth century. We will place the development of racial theories of sickness and health in a broad social and political context – and, in particular, explain the medical salience of race in the setting of slavery and colonialism. Discussions will focus primarily on North America and Europe, but will also explore the making of knowledge about race in global settings. | Crosslisted with Afro-American Studies, History of Science
3 cr.; Z Humanities or Social Science, C (L&S), E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: None, open to Freshmen |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 508: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| Medicine in Europe from the 18th century to mid-20th century, investigating changes in disease and demography, state interest in health care, the medical professions, and both scientific and alternative medical ideas. | Crosslisted with History and History of Science
3 cr.; H (Humanities) I (Intermediate) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Instructor consent. Includes graduate and professional careers. Graduate/Professional students must also enroll in Medical History and Bioethics 708 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course offers a survey of ethical issues that arise within the context of modern medicine. Topics discussed may include: autonomy, informed consent, and the doctor-patient relationship; research involving human subjects; contraception and abortion; reproductive technologies and surrogacy; genetic screening; physician-assisted dying; the treatment (and non-treatment) of severely disabled newborns; and rationing and the allocation of scarce health care resources. The course will be conducted in a traditional lecture/discussion section format, with lectures delivered by bioethics experts from the UW-Madison community. Readings will be drawn from diverse disciplines but will routinely include articles from medical ethics, philosophy, history of medicine and science, legal scholarship, and judicial decisions. | Crosslisted with Philosophy and meets with Law
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tuesday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm, plus discussions Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst |
|
|
Medical History and Bioethics 708: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature concerning medicine in Europe from the 18th century to mid-20th century, investigating changes in disease and demography, state interest in health care, and medical professions, and both scientific and alternative medical ideas. | Not cross-listed
1 cr. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate/Professional standing & concurrent registration in Medical History and Bioethics or History, or History of Science 508 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course explores central ethical issues and tensions in public health and health policy. There will be eight interactive discussion sessions of 1.5 hours each over a 4-week period. We will begin with a session that explores the merits and hazards of thinking critically about difficult ethical issues. From there we have seven sessions on more specific ethical issues in population health. Potential topics include: the economic and moral considerations for and against government involvement in health care markets; the vexing question of whether citizens in advanced nations have strong duties to promote the health and well-being of the foreign poor; whether U.S. hospitals have duties to provide “uncompensated care” (read: free care) to undocumented immigrants, and whether these hospitals may ethically seek the deportation of undocumented individuals; alternative approaches to rationing health care; the perennial ethical tension between treating those in dire peril now and preventing the deaths of statistical victims in the future; personal responsibility for risky health behaviors and the government’s role in influencing health behaviors; and, finally, cutting-edge issues of exploitation in public health research trials. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, advanced Tuesday 5:30 – 7:00 pm (meets March 6 through May 1) Prerequisites: Limited to 4th year medical students |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Pablo Gomez |
|
| In this interdisciplinary graduate course, we will put in conversation recent literature on the history of the body, with histories of race, capitalism, labor, science, biomedicine, and public health. Departing from a well-developed historiography on the cultural and social history of the body, we will examine works that analyze how different societies from the early modern period onwards have developed methods for the quantification of human bodies, and the economic value of corporeality and its imagined labor output.
During the semester, we will pay particular attention to historiographical approaches to the question of how political economy, financial markets, and different economic models around the globe have transformed not only ideas about the body, but also its very materiality. Among other topics, we will study historical examinations of the close relationships between the history of coerced labor – prominently slavery – and capitalism, as well as works focused on the effects of capitalist-embodied material culture on the production of new ways of being-in-the-world. We will also analyze how scholars in a variety of fields have grappled with the history of biomedical bodily quantification, corporeal commodification, racial capitalism, calculation of risk related to the human body, and uses of the value of racialized and gendered bodies in, for instance, financial transactions and public health studies. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits. A (Advanced) Wednesday 3:30 – 5:25 pm Prerequisites: Graduate/Professional level and consent of instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project |
|
Fall 2017
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Thomas Broman |
|
| General Description: This course presents an introductory survey of the history of medicine from Antiquity to the 20th Century, and is aimed primarily at students interested in careers in the health professions. It explores the understanding of health and illness in Western culture, showing why particular ideas of illness came into dominance at different moments in history. Most importantly, by providing the “long perspective” on the history of medicine, the course challenges some widely held assumptions about how the advancement of science has contributed to modern medicine.
The historical survey is divided into four units, each of which is based in a different view of the body. The first unit, called “The Humoral Body” explains the exceptionally flexible ideas of illness and its causes that were first developed in the ancient world and persisted for many centuries until well past 1700. Some of the ideas first developed in humoral medicine, such as the intimate interactions between the body and its environment, are still with us today. The second unit, called “The Anatomical-Morphological Body,” examines the body as a collection of discrete parts which perform particular functions in the body’s overall economy. This anatomical view of the body also developed in the ancient world, although anatomically based approaches to the study of illness really only became influential in the 1700s and 1800s. The third unit, “The Infected Body,” looks at how illness first came to be seen not merely as something affecting individuals, but also as something having important consequences for society as a whole. This thinking first emerged in the wake of the Black Death in 14th-century Europe, and it was important in the development of the Germ Theory of Disease in the latter part of the 19th century. Finally, the fourth unit of the course will look at “The body normalized and measured,” an appropriate label for medicine in the 20th century, when physicians developed the idea that seemingly no one’s health could be maintained without incessant medical attention and supervision. Needless to say, this is the view of health and illness that persists in our own time. In this unit we also consider how health has become something that can be purchased like any other consumer product. Course Requirements: Aside from attendance in discussion sections, the basic requirement for the course consists of a mixture of three take-home essays ranging from three to five pages in length, which are based in the readings and designed to illustrate the major issues in each unit. Discussion sections may also feature some shorter and more informal writing assignments. Texts: Xeroxed course reader. |
Cross listed with History of Science
3 credits; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Monday/Wednesday 9:55 – 10:45 am, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. This course is not being offered for Honors fall 2017. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 231: Instructor: Pablo Gomez |
|
| This interdisciplinary course will provide students with analytical tools for the critical examination of the social, cultural, political and economic determinants of health conditions and medical practice. It will use primary and secondary historical readings, media reports, films, ethnographic and medical case studies, material culture, and literature to introduce students to basic concepts of global health, bioethics, medical anthropology, and the history of biomedicine, public health and disease in the United States. The course will feature weekly invited lectures from a number of experts coming from the Medical History and Bioethics department. It will examine urgent topics such as the role that race, national origin, gender, sexuality, religion, socio economic status play in shaping ideas about disease, health and body normativity, and how they have modeled medical practice and public health policies. We will pay special attention to how these factors determine how patients and providers experience and ideate disease and treatment, and how they respond to specific health care policies. The course will make emphasis on the important role that conditions of structural violence and inequality play as determinants of health conditions in a globalized world. | Cross listed with Anthropology
3 credits. Z (Humanities or Social Science) E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00am – 12:15pm Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 505: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course investigates debates in moral and political philosophy concerning social obligations to provide health care coverage to those within a nation’s borders. For the first part of the course, our main task is to understand prominent accounts of social and distributive justice and to evaluate their implications for health policy. We’ll then consider the moral implications of health disparities facing traditionally marginalized sub-populations. Finally, we’ll investigate various methods of health care rationing, which many believe to be an unavoidable requirement of the need to control health care costs. | Cross listed with Philosophy
3 credits. H (Humanities) A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 9:30 – 10:45 am Prerequisites: Junior status or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| What is public health and who is responsible for insuring the public health? If the state is responsible for public health, how far can the state go to insure the public welfare (and whose welfare counts)? Is there a way to reconcile the collective well-being with individual rights? This course considers the ways in which Americans have answered these questions from the colonial period through the twenty-first century. Using both primary documents and secondary sources, the course explores how American society has responded to both epidemic diseases (from smallpox to Zika) and to immigrants, how Americans have negotiated the challenges of the environment and the workplace, and how as a society we have considered the implications of such behavioral practices as cigarette smoking, wearing motorcycle helmets, and eating fast food for health outcomes. The course examines both the development of public health administrations (at the local, state and federal level) and the role of the legal system in promoting the public health of Americans.
Graduate students registered in 509 must register concurrently in MHB 709. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits. B (Biological Science) I (Intermediate) Counts as LAS credit (L&S) Monday/Wednesday 2:30 – 3:45pm Prerequisites: Junior status or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 553: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| Intense concern over the burgeoning of emerging infectious diseases–along with the renewed vigor of known epidemics-has heightened medical, media, and popular attention to the international dimensions of health in a globalizing society. Yet historians have long recognized the “microbial unification of the world” as a phenomenon that dates at least to the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of historical and anthropological materials and methods, this course explores the history of public health and medicine as international phenomena, concentrating chiefly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specific topics include the connections between global pandemics such as cholera and plague to European colonial expansion; the rise of international aid organizations; historical and contemporary anxieties about global migration and the spread of disease; and the international dimensions of a global medical marketplace. Particular themes include the connection between culture and medical ideas and practices; and the tensions of practicing medicine in multi-cultural settings.
Graduate students registered in 553 must register concurrently in MHB 753. |
Cross listed with History of Science and Population Health
3 credits. Z (Humanities or Social Science) I (Intermediate) Monday/Wednesday 2:30 – 3:45 pm, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| What does it mean to speak of the “greater good” and how should that idea influence the aims and aspirations of global health movements? In this course we will engage with diverse sources–from philosophy to epidemiology, anthropology, and literature–to address this and many related questions. We will examine the ethical principles that have been said to underlie global health policies, and we will ask how concerns about global health should shape our daily choices. We will ask whether it is moral obligation to be an “effective altruist,” which is someone who is dedicated to giving a great deal to the most effective charities around the world. To what extent is it permissible to prioritize causes that are near to our hearts and houses, when that money could do more good if donated to an organization that does work half a world away? — No prior knowledge of bioethics, philosophy, or global health is required. | Not cross-listed
3 credits. Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 610: Instructor: Linda F. Hogle |
|
| This course is designed to introduce graduate and upper-level undergraduate science, engineering, and medical students working in regenerative medicine research to the key ethical, policy and social issues relevant to the field. Primary scientific and policy documents will be used as resources as well as analyses of current social and political environments.
Topics include (among others): The history of legal & political disputes over embryonic stem cell research; understanding public responses & the media; responsible conduct of science for stem cell researchers ; treatments outside of clinical trials; social & ethical issues in translational research & commercialization. NOTE: THIS COURSE IS TAUGHT AS A CONCENTRATED, SHORT COURSE (8 sessions). Counts for ethics credit for a number of graduate science programs (check first with your advisor). |
Not cross-listed
Variable Credit Course 1-3 credits. Must have instructor consent to enroll for more than one credit. Wednesday 4:00 – 6:00 pm; 8 sessions; September 6 through October 18, 2017 Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional Student. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 709: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| This course for advanced students focuses on the recent historiography of American public health. See MHB 509. | Not cross-listed
1 cr. Day/Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Medical Hist/Hist of Science 509. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 753: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| See MHB 553. Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature.
Graduate students taking 753 will concurrently enroll in 553. |
Not cross-listed
1 credit Day/Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status and concurrent registration in Med Hist 553, or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Gregg Mitman |
|
| This seminar seeks to put historical scholarship on the global flows of capital, commodities, and disease in conversation with one another. Our temporal reach is expansive, from the shifting patterns of yellow fever accompanying the Atlantic slave trade to the global threat of avian influenza arising from factory farms and changing diets worldwide. We will consider a range of commodities—from cotton and coal to latex and blood—to name just a few, to ask what commodities, and associated diseases that accompanied them, can reveal about changing economic, material, political, and social relationships on the global stage. At the same time, we will interrogate the ways that changing ecological regimes of capital have altered and redistributed life—both human and non-human—and created new disease pathways. We will also attend to the different questions, methods, and forms of evidence that economic, environmental, and medical history bring to a consideration of such questions. This is a historiographic based seminar focused on readings and discussion. A sample of likely books include Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton (2014); Mike Davis’s The Monster at Our Door (2006); Gabrielle Hecht’s Being Nuclear (2014); Nancy Rose Hunt’s A Nervous State (2016); Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner’s Lead Wars (2013); Sidney Mintz’s Sweetness and Power (1986); John Soluri’s Banana Cultures (2006); and Brett Walker’s Toxic Archipelago (2009) among many other reading selections. | Crosslisted with History of Science 919 and meets with History 705
3 credits. A (Advanced) Tuesday 1:00 – 3:30 pm Prerequisites: Graduate / Professional Level status and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. Instructor consent required. |
|
Spring 2017
|
Medical History and Bioethics 133: Instructor: Nicole C. Nelson |
|
| From medical advancements to environmental crises and global food shortages, the life sciences are implicated in some of the most pressing social issues of our time. This course explores events in the history of biology from the mid-twentieth century to today, and examines how developments in this science have shaped and are shaped by society. In the first unit, we investigate the origins of the institutions, technologies, and styles of practice that characterize contemporary biology, such as the use of mice as “model organisms” for understanding human diseases. The second unit examines biological controversies such as the introduction of genetically modified plants into the food supply. The final unit asks how biological facts and theories have been and continue to be used as a source for understanding ourselves. | Cross-listed with History of Science
3 cr.; Z (either Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Monday/Wednesday 11:00 am Prerequisites: None, Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 213: Instructor: Emer Lucey |
|
| The course provides an introduction to the intersections of health and environment on a global scale. Exposes students to a range of problems in global environmental health, including climate change, disease ecology, and the globalization of disease. | Cross-listed with Environmental Studies
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 286: Instructor: Judith A. Houck |
|
| What is disease? Who decides? What are the consequences of labeling a behavior a disease? Can disease be a tool of liberation? Can disease be an instrument of oppression? How do race, class, and gender affect our understandings of and experiences with illness? How have diseases shaped American history? This course is designed to illustrate the various ways disease operates in America. We will examine the role of disease on at least four levels – political, social, cultural, and personal – to demonstrate that diseases are not merely bodily afflictions; they are also participants in the body politic. At first glance, this course outline might look like one disease after another, and on some level it is. However, the diseases are chosen to illustrate a different point about the social and cultural lives of disease in the history of the United States. Although the course moves forward chronologically, it is not meant as a narrative history of disease. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; H Humanities, E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 9:30 – 10:15 am |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 394: Instructor: Scott Prinster |
|
| Why is the United States a scientific nation? Why do Americans place so much faith in scientific explanations, especially when many of us lack even basic knowledge of the sciences? We will trace the development of scientific knowledge and institutions in the United States from the colonial period to the present, viewing science, technology, and medicine as social and cultural expressions as well as knowledge about nature. We will cover the migration of European science, its development in colonial America, the formation of a national scientific community, the emergence of Big Science, and the tensions between the sciences and other value systems. We will also give special attention to the complex relationships of science with religion, race and ethnicity, gender, and economics. No special background in the sciences is expected for enrollment. | Cross-listed with History of Science and History
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructor: Karen Walloch |
|
| Who is responsible for health? When and why does an individual’s health or personal behavior become a matter for public concern? What can communities do to ensure the health and welfare of their members, that is, the public’s health? How do we reconcile individual liberty with the state’s interest in preserving or enhancing public health? Questions of public responsibility for health remain central in policy debates today, and an understanding of how we got here might help us untangle some of this rhetoric.
This course surveys the history of public health in the United States from the colonial period to the present. We will look at how cities, states, voluntary groups, and the federal government have organized to protect and promote health. From the earliest responses to control epidemics to our current debates, politics, commerce, and cultural attitudes about race, class, and gender have shaped public health initiatives throughout American history. |
Cross-listed with History of Science
3 credits, B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate) Monday/Wednesday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Junior standing or Instructor consent. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. Graduate students must also register for 709 concurrently with 509. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 523: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| The problem of the 20th century, wrote W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), “is the problem of the color-line.” This course considers the issue of the color line in American medicine over the past two centuries. We will be looking at the ways in which skin color (and other elements of “racial identity”) have influenced the experiences of patients, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers, seeking to document and analyze how conceptions of race have shaped the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past two hundred years. Topics include the origins of racial classification, the health and medical care of slaves, the use of minorities as research subjects, especially the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the history of racial disparities in medicine, and the efforts to integrate the American medical profession. | Cross-listed with History of Science and Afro-American Studies
3 cr.; S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructor: Robert K Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from medical procedures and aspects of health care such as genetic screening, paternalism, informed consent, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, and human subject research. | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tuesday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm, plus discussions Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Robert K. Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology to microorganisms, crops, animals, and humans. Readings cover applied ethics, moral theory, political philosophy, the science used in biotechnology, and current regulations governing its use. | Cross-listed with Agronomy, Philosophy, and Community and Environmental Sociology
3 credits; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. I Intermediate. Monday/Wednesday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 610: Instructor: Linda F. Hogle |
|
| This course is designed to introduce graduate and upper-level undergraduate science, engineering, and medical students working in regenerative medicine research to the key ethical, policy and social issues relevant to the field. Primary scientific and policy documents will be used as resources as well as analyses of current social and political environments.
Topics include (among others): The history of legal & political disputes over embryonic stem cell research; understanding public responses & the media; responsible conduct of science for stem cell researchers ; treatments outside of clinical trials; social & ethical issues in translational research & commercialization. NOTE: THIS COURSE IS TAUGHT AS A CONCENTRATED, SHORT COURSE (8 sessions). Counts for ethics credit for a number of graduate science programs (check first with your advisor). |
Not cross-listed
Variable Credit Course 1-3 credits. Must have instructor consent to enroll for more than one credit. Monday 4:00 – 6:00 pm; 8 sessions; Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
|
Medical History and Bioethics 709: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature concerning public health issues and problems in America from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and efforts made toward their solutions. | Not cross-listed
1 cr. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Med Hist 509. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course focuses on important ethics controversies arising in the health sciences. It consists of nine lecture/discussions focused on a different topic each week. The course challenges students to view ethical issues from multiple perspectives and encourages interpersonal and interdisciplinary discourse. Topics can include: health care rationing, genetic screening, genetic engineering, organ donation and procurement, paternalism in public health, public health priority-setting, tensions and affinities between different ethical methodologies, and the distinctive tasks facing hospital ethics committees. The course is open to students pursuing a health science degree (e.g. medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physician assistants); others may enroll only with consent of the instructor. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, advanced Tuesday 5:30 – 7:00 pm (meets Jan-Apr) Prerequisites: Limited to medical students or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
|
Fall 2016
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Thomas Broman |
|
| General Description: This course presents an introductory survey of the history of medicine from Antiquity to the 20th Century, and is aimed primarily at students interested in careers in the health professions. It explores the understanding of health and illness in Western culture, showing why particular ideas of illness came into dominance at different moments in history. Most importantly, by providing the “long perspective” on the history of medicine, the course challenges some widely held assumptions about how the advancement of science has contributed to modern medicine.
The historical survey is divided into four units, each of which is based in a different view of the body. The first unit, called “The Humoral Body” explains the exceptionally flexible ideas of illness and its causes that were first developed in the ancient world and persisted for many centuries until well past 1700. Some of the ideas first developed in humoral medicine, such as the intimate interactions between the body and its environment, are still with us today. The second unit, called “The Anatomical-Morphological Body,” examines the body as a collection of discrete parts which perform particular functions in the body’s overall economy. This anatomical view of the body also developed in the ancient world, although anatomically based approaches to the study of illness really only became influential in the 1700s and 1800s. The third unit, “The Infected Body,” looks at how illness first came to be seen not merely as something affecting individuals, but also as something having important consequences for society as a whole. This thinking first emerged in the wake of the Black Death in 14th-century Europe, and it was important in the development of the Germ Theory of Disease in the latter part of the 19th century. Finally, the fourth unit of the course will look at “The body normalized and measured,” an appropriate label for medicine in the 20th century, when physicians developed the idea that seemingly no one’s health could be maintained without incessant medical attention and supervision. Needless to say, this is the view of health and illness that persists in our own time. In this unit we also consider how health has become something that can be purchased like any other consumer product. Course Requirements: Aside from attendance in discussion sections, the basic requirement for the course consists of a mixture of three take-home essays ranging from three to five pages in length, which are based in the readings and designed to illustrate the major issues in each unit. Discussion sections may also feature some shorter and more informal writing assignments. Texts: Xeroxed course reader. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S; Open to Freshmen Monday/Wednesday 9:55 – 10:45 am, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. This course is not being offered for Honors fall 2016. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 504: Instructor: TBA |
|
| This course is designed to introduce students to the history of health care in America from the early republic to the present. In this class we will analyze the motivations and actions of individuals engaged in health care, as they contain infectious disease outbreaks, make a profit, deliver children, try to understand suffering, trauma, and death, pioneer new healing techniques, promote social equity and access to care, decide which bodily states are healthy and which are pathological, and, in general, try to promote human flourishing, either just their own or other people’s. As such, the sweep of the story of American health care is not just that of the development of new, life-saving treatments for disease, but is also a deeper inquiry into the way medicine interacted with culture, politics and society in America. (course syllabus) | Crosslisted with History and History of Science
3 credits. Biological Science. Counts toward the Natural Science requirement. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate Monday/Wednesday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. And must be Junior status or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 526: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| There is a long history of bodily modification for functional restoration, augmentation, enhancement, or aesthetic purposes and may involve chemical, mechanical, interactive or implantable technologies. How do such technological alterations affect our identity? Our sense of being “human”? Our notions of “fairness”? What cultural, social and ethical issues are involved in decisions to take up particular technologies? This course explores examines assumptions about the ‘normal’ body, followed by cultural understandings of ability, appearance, function and enhancement. Topics will include bionics, regenerative medicine, genetic enhancements, assistive technologies, neural prosthetics, cognitive enhancements, digital health and quantified self technologies, among others. The course is of particular interest to students in pre-professional medical fields, biomedical engineers, social sciences, and disability studies.
Graduate students registered in 526 must register concurrently in MHB 726. |
Not cross-listed
3 credits; Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate Monday 4:00 – 6:00 pm Prerequisites: Sophomore status or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| This course will explore and examine the core ethical issues in clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation, including the pending changes to the Common Rule. | Not cross-listed
1 credit; Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Advanced Thursday 3:30 – 5:30 pm. Class will be held in 1203 Health Sciences Learning Center (HSLC) Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 553: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| Intense concern over the burgeoning of emerging infectious diseases–along with the renewed vigor of known epidemics-has heightened medical, media, and popular attention to the international dimensions of health in a globalizing society. Yet historians have long recognized the “microbial unification of the world” as a phenomenon that dates at least to the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of historical and anthropological materials and methods, this course explores the history of public health and medicine as international phenomena, concentrating chiefly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specific topics include the connections between global pandemics such as cholera and plague to European colonial expansion; the rise of international aid organizations; historical and contemporary anxieties about global migration and the spread of disease; and the international dimensions of a global medical marketplace. Particular themes include the connection between culture and medical ideas and practices; and the tensions of practicing medicine in multi-cultural settings.
Graduate students registered in 553 must register concurrently in MHB 753. |
Crosslisted with History of Science and Population Health
3 credits; Either Humanities or Social Science. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm plus one discussion session Prerequisites: Junior or Senior standing, or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 561: Instructor: John Scarborough |
|
| Greek and Roman medicine and drug lore from the Pre-Socratics to Oribasius (c. 600 B.C. – A.D. 350), including the backgrounds of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian medicine. | Crosslisted with History of Science, History, Classics, and S&A Pharm
3 credits; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate or Advanced Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or DPH or TOX. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 726: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| See MHB 526.
Graduate students taking 726 will concurrently enroll in 526 and pursue independent research in consultation with the instructor. |
Not cross-listed
1 credit Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status and concurrent registration in Med Hist 526 or consent of Instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 753: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| See MHB 553. Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature.
Graduate students taking 753 will concurrently enroll in 553. |
Not cross-listed
1 credit Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status and concurrent registration in Med Hist 553, or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| This graduate seminar is focused on reading recent histories that explore the ways in which medicine and science influenced, and were influenced by, war and the needs of the military. This will include readings on the impact of war on the human body, the production, representation, and experience of warfare, military, and medical technologies on the human body, the discussions of acceptable and unacceptable types of harm, and the influence of wartime needs on the food supply and nutrition science. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits Tuesday 10:00 am – 12:00 pm Prerequisites: Graduate status and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. Instructor consent required. |
|
Spring 2016
|
Medical History and Bioethics 133: Instructor: Nicole C. Nelson |
|
| From medical advancements to environmental crises and global food shortages, biology and the life sciences are implicated in some of the most pressing social issues of our time. This course explores events in the history of biology from the mid twentieth century to today, and examines how developments in this scientific field have shaped and are shaped by society. The course is divided into three thematic units. In the first unit, we investigate the origins of the institutions, technologies, and styles of practice that characterize contemporary biology; such as the use of mice as “model organisms” for understanding human diseases. In the second unit, we delve into areas of biology that have raised controversies about regulation, governance, and public participation; such as the introduction of genetically modified plants into the food supply. The final unit asks how biological facts and theories have been and continue to be used as a source for understanding ourselves. Within the units, each week begins with an examination of an historical event or controversy that provides an entry into a discussion about how biology and society interact. The creation of a cloned sheep named Dolly and the ensuing media coverage and controversy, for example, demonstrates how new reproductive technologies are challenging fundamental categories that we use to describe the life course such as “parent” and “offspring.” This course will help students in the sciences, social sciences, or humanities to develop the analytic and writing skills needed to confront complex social issues involving the life sciences. No prior knowledge of biology, history, or social theory is required. | Cross-listed with History of Science
3 cr.; Z (either Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Monday/Wednesday 11:00 am Prerequisites: None, Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 213: Instructor: Monica M. White |
|
| The course provides an introduction to the intersections of health and environment on a global scale. Exposes students to a range of problems in global environmental health, including climate change, disease ecology, and the globalization of disease. | Cross-listed with Environmental Studies
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: None |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 275: Instructor: Pablo Gomez |
|
| This course surveys the medical and scientific constructions of ideas about race and ethnicity since the eighteenth century. We will place the development of racial theories of sickness and health in a broad social and political context – and, in particular, explain the medical salience of race in the setting of slavery and colonialism. Discussions will focus primarily on North America and Europe, but will also explore the making of knowledge about race in global settings. | Cross-listed with Afro-American Studies, History of Science
3 cr.; Z Humanities or Social Science, C (L&S), E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Open to Freshmen |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructor: Dayle B. DeLancey |
|
| Who is responsible for public health and how far does this responsibility extend? How do we, in a democratic state, reconcile individual rights and collective welfare? This course looks at these questions through American history from the European conquest through the most recent clamor over anthrax attacks and other forms of bioterrorism. Using both primary documents and secondary sources, the course explores the role of infectious disease outbreaks, the development of organized public health infrastructures, and the part played by social, cultural and political concerns in providing for American public health. From yellow fever to HIV, from cigarette smoking to banning Oreos and other trans-fat foods, the course examines efforts to improve the health of Americans, sometimes by force of law, in the name of public welfare. | Cross-listed with History of Science
3 credits, B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate) Monday/Wednesday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. Graduate students must also register for 709 concurrently with 509. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 513: Instructor: Gregg Mitman |
|
| What explains the distribution of different diseases around the world and how have these patterns changed over time? In what ways have the growth of cities, new industries, extractive economies, mass migrations, and “global colonialism” shaped human health? How has the rise of emerging diseases shaped visions of the global environment?
This course begins to answer such questions by exploring the dynamic interplay between environment and health over the last 300 years. We will consider both the history of ideas about environment and illness as well as the ways in which changing environments have affected well-being. In addition, we will examine how place – from agricultural plantations to the factory floor, from health resorts to toxic waste sites – has mattered to the experience of illness, the production of knowledge, and the control of disease. We will also investigate various social, economic, and political forces that have historically shaped inequitable environmental and disease burdens and the different struggles for health and environmental justice that have occurred across the globe. |
Cross-listed with History of Science, Environmental Studies
3 credits; Z (Humanities or Social Science), Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Advanced Monday/Wednesday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Junior status or higher (including graduate and professional careers). Excludes university Special and Guest students. Graduate students must also register for 713 concurrently with 513. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 515: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course focuses on ethical issues implicated in a population-level approach to disease prevention and health promotion. Students will explore prominent theoretical approaches to public health ethics and will engage with several ethical tensions. Issues discussed include: the use of coercive or intrusive public health interventions that restrict individual freedom infringe upon individual privacy or risks of harm and/or invite individual harm; the justification of paternalistic measures in societies or sub-populations that seemingly indulge in pleasurable yet unhealthy behaviors; the need to choose between the identifiable victims we can save with expensive measures here and now and the more numerous unidentifiable victims we could save in the future with the same monetary investment; the trade-offs between maximizing aggregate health benefits and addressing the special needs of vulnerable social sub-groups and individuals; ethical issues in international pharmaceutical research; ethical issues involving vaccination, screening, and surveillance; and ethical issues raised by the Ebola epidemic. | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 credits; H (Humanities) A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 9:30 – 10:45 am Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructors: Robert K Streiffer and Norman C. Fost |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from medical procedures and aspects of health care such as genetic screening, paternalism, informed consent, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, and human subject research. | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tuesday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm, plus discussions Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 562: Instructor: John Scarborough |
|
| Byzantine and Islamic medicine and drug lore from Oribasius to the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance (c. 350 – c. 1400 A.D.). | Cross-listed with S&A Pharmacy, History, History of Science, and Medieval Studies
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Junior standing or DPH or TOX. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Robert K. Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology to microorganisms, crops, and non-humans. Readings cover applied ethics, moral theory, political philosophy, the science used in biotechnology, and current regulations governing its use. | Cross-listed with Agronomy, Philosophy, and Community and Environmental Sociology.
3 credits; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. I Intermediate. Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 610: Instructor: Linda F. Hogle |
|
| This course is designed to introduce graduate science, engineering, and medical students working in regenerative medicine research to the key ethical, policy and social issues relevant to the field. Primary scientific and policy documents will be used as resources as well as analyses of current social and political environments.
Topics include (among others): The background of legal disputes over embryonic stem cell research; Understanding the relations among governments, the public & the media in the face of controversial research; Guidelines and oversight rules: what stem cell researchers need to know; Clinical trials & First-in-human research; Translational issues: data sharing & intellectual property. NOTE: THIS COURSE IS TAUGHT AS A CONCENTRATED, SHORT COURSE (8 sessions). Counts for ethics credit for a number of graduate science programs (check first with your advisor). |
Not cross-listed
Variable Credit Course 1-3 credits. Must have instructor consent to enroll for more than one credit. Monday 4:00 – 6:00 pm; 8 sessions Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668: Instructor: Dayle B. DeLancey |
|
| Covering the history of nursing in the United States from the 1600s through the present, this course chronicles the development and evolution of American nursing as a standalone subject. Beginning by comparing nursing in Britain’s first American colonies to previous histories of nursing nuns and others in the European past, the course considers: 17th- and 18th-century American nursing as the dominion of female relatives in home settings and of women of “lower social strata” in public settings; the influence of 18th-century crises like the Revolutionary War and the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 upon nursing practice; the dual impact of Civil War medical hygiene and the U.S.’s embrace of Briton Florence Nightingale’s mid-19th-century nursing reforms; the development of surgical and public health nursing within late-19th- and early-20th-century laboratory and social approaches to medicine; nursing’s interaction with emerging medical technologies in the 20th and 21st centuries; and the impact of World War I, World War II, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the first Gulf War, and the ongoing ’War on Terror’ upon nursing practice over the last century. In the process, the course will explore the development and evolution of: the nursing profession; nursing education; nursing ethics; the impact of socio-political change upon nursing; questions of gender, status, expertise, and authority in nursing; and the popular image of the American nurse. | Cross-listed with History of Science
3 credits; H (Humanities) A (Advanced) Monday/Wednesday 4:00 – 5:15 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
|
Medical History and Bioethics 709: Instructor: Dayle B. DeLancey |
|
| Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature concerning public health issues and problems in America from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and efforts made toward their solutions. | Not cross-listed
1 cr. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Med Hist 509. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 713: Instructor: Gregg Mitman |
|
| A satellite graduate seminar that explores the issues covered in 513 in greater depth, required of graduate students enrolled in Med Hist 513 | Cross-listed with History of Science, Environmental Studies
1 cr. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status and concurrent registration in Med Hist 513. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 720: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| Social Dimensions of Global Health. | Not cross-listed
1 cr. Wednesday 12:05 – 12:55 pm Prerequisites: Limited to medical students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 728: Instructor: Linda F. Hogle |
|
| The aim of this course is to provide understanding of the broader social, cultural and political contexts in which debates around medical science and practice occur, and to explore the use of qualitative and interdisciplinary methods to conduct research in these areas. Readings will draw upon perspectives from the medical social sciences & science and technology studies to analyze dilemmas in medicine as well as to critically examine the field of bioethics. The course will cover topics in biomedical science and technology as well as clinical and public health, and may emphasize one or the other depending on the interests of enrolled students. It is designed for the needs of graduate students in the social sciences and humanities, population health sciences, health policy, law, medicine, and health professions. Basic knowledge of social theory is recommended.
Topics may include concepts of risk, medical privacy, digital health and the internet of things, biological citizenship and participation in large-scale research cohorts, among others. |
Not cross-listed
3 cr.; B (Biological Science) Thursday 1:20 – 3:15 pm Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional Status and consent of Instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructors: Norman C. Fost and J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course explores central ethical issues and tensions in public health and health policy. There will be eight interactive discussion sessions of 1.5 hours each over a 4-week period. We will begin with a session that explores the merits and hazards of thinking critically about difficult ethical issues. From there we have seven sessions on more specific ethical topics, including: the ethics of population-level screening programs, especially in light of concerns over so-called eugenics; the ethics of laws requiring vaccination for certain diseases; Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial public health legacy in New York City; whether employers have a right to refuse to hire smokers, as many hospitals are now doing; whether it is permissible to ration medical care based on age; the perennial ethical tension between treating those in dire peril now and preventing the deaths of statistical victims in the future; and, finally, relatively new issues of exploitation in public health research trials. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, advanced Tuesday/Thursday 5:30 – 7:00 pm (meets Jan-Feb) Prerequisites: Limited to 4th year medical students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Judith Houck |
|
| They started free clinics. They took back the night. They lobbied Congress. They showed each other their cervixes. They practiced medicine without a license. They delivered babies. They insisted they weren’t sick. They insisted they were. They shouted, they marched, they shopped, they struck, they sat.
Health activists, working both inside healthcare professions and outside them, have profoundly shaped medical institutions, workplace environments, research agendas, disease boundaries, treatment options, and medical accessibility. This course examines the history of health activism in the United States, paying particular attention to the place of race, gender, and sexuality in health movements. |
Cross-listed with History of Science
3 credits. A (Advanced) Wednesday 9:00 – 11:15 am Prerequisites: Graduate status and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
|
Fall 2015
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Thomas Broman |
|
| General Description: This course presents an introductory survey of the history of medicine from Antiquity to the 20th Century, and is aimed primarily at students interested in careers in the health professions. It explains how the understanding of health and illness has evolved in Western culture, showing why particular ideas of illness came into dominance at different moments in history. Most importantly, by providing the “long perspective” on the history of medicine, the course challenges some widely held assumptions about how the advancement of science has contributed to modern medicine.
The historical survey is divided into four units, each of which is based in a different view of the body. The first unit, called “The Humoral Body” explains the exceptionally flexible ideas of illness and its causes that were first developed in the ancient world and persisted for many centuries until well past 1700. Some of the ideas first developed in humoral medicine, such as the intimate interactions between the body and its environment, are still with us today. The second unit, called “The Anatomical-Morphological Body,” examines the body as a collection of discrete parts which perform particular functions in the body’s overall economy. This anatomical view of the body also developed in the ancient world, although anatomically based approaches to the study of illness really only became influential in the 1700s and 1800s. The third unit, “The Infected Body,” looks at how illness first came to be seen not merely as something affecting individuals, but also as something having important consequences for society as a whole. This kind of thinking first emerged in the wake of the Black Death in 14th-century Europe, and it was important in the development of the Germ Theory of Disease in the latter part of the 19th century. Finally, the fourth unit of the course will look at “The body normalized and measured,” an appropriate label for medicine in the 20th century, when physicians developed the idea that seemingly no one’s health could be maintained without incessant medical attention and supervision. Needless to say, this is the view of health and illness that persists in our own time. In this unit we also consider how health has become something that can be purchased like any other consumer product, as for example in the case of plastic surgery to correct minor flaws in one’s appearance. Course Requirements: Aside from attendance in discussion sections, the basic requirement for the course consists of a mixture of three take-home essays, ranging from three to seven pages, which are based in the readings and meant to illustrate the major issues in each unit. Discussion sections may also feature some shorter and more informal writing assignments. Texts: Xeroxed course reader. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S; Open to Freshmen Monday/Wednesday 9:55 – 10:45 am, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. For honors credit con reg in Hist Sci/Hist Med 284 or cons instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 218: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| This course focuses on medicine and health care in 20th century America. The course addresses, among other topics, why and how the United States developed our current health care system. In so doing, we will consider the changes in both preventative medicine (vaccines, fluoridation) and in medical therapy (especially penicillin and other antibiotics) that transformed the experience of health care and the expectations about what medical science could and should do. Other topics include the rise of hospitals, the changing face of the American medical and nursing professions, development of new technologies (x-rays, telephones, etc), debates over national health insurance, the cultural authority of the medical profession, and media representations of doctors, nurses, patients and hospitals. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; S (Social Science), C (L&S), E (Elementary) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 284: Instructor: Thomas Broman |
|
| This course is a one-credit honors option that accompanies Hist. Sci./Med. Hist. 212, (“Bodies Diseases, and Healers”). By signing up for this course and registering simultaneously for honors in 212, you will receive 4 credits of honors course work. Because we meet in a seminar-type discussion format, enrollment is limited to eighteen.
The theme for 284 in 2015 will be “Plagues in History.” Through readings extending from Antiquity to recent coverage of the ebola epidemic in West Africa, we will begin by examining the origins of the concept of a “plague” in Biblical literature as well as in historical writings of ancient Greece. From there we will look at how the concept of plague has been constantly reinforced over many centuries, retaining a core set of key features even as it has also been applied to new outbreaks of disease and to new historical events such as the Holocaust. In all of this our focus will be on the question of what constitutes an event as a plague, as opposed to an epidemic or other outbreak of disease. Requirements: 1) Regular attendance at weekly meetings and preparation for them by doing readings beforehand; 2) Three or more short essays (about 250-350 words) of the “reading response” type; and 3) a final 5-6 page essay on recent concepts of plague or a topic of the student’s choice, to be worked out in consultation with the instructor. Readings: Readings include a course reader that will be available from L&S Social Science Copy Center in August, Connie Willis Doomsday Book (an award winning sci-fi novel on the Black Death of the fourteenth century), Albert Camus The Plague (a famous allegory about the Holocaust from the late 1940s), and Randy Shilts And the Band Played On (a history of the AIDS epidemic in the late 1970s and 1980s). |
Crosslisted with History of Science
1 credit; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Wednesday 11:00 – 11:50 am Prerequisites: Concurrent registration for honors in Hist Sci/Hist Med 212 or cons inst. Open to freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 333: Instructor: Lynn K. Nyhart |
|
| As many of you have probably experienced, “biology” is a very broad category covering many different ways of knowing living nature. This year, we will survey four different traditions in history of the life sciences since the 18th century–natural historical, agricultural, biomedical, and biophysical. We will focus on some “classics” and “game-changers” in the history of biology, and seek to put them in their broader scientific and social contexts. Such works will likely include: Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, Mendel’s pea-plant experiments, Claude Bernard’s Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, and Erwin Schroedinger’s What is Life?
General requirements: Because this course revolves in good part around discussion, its success depends on its participants’ having read the material carefully and being willing to talk about it. We will read both ‘primary sources’ (scientific writings by participants) and ‘secondary sources’ (writings by historians and scientists reflecting on and analyzing what happened). The reading load for any given week (2 sessions) will range from 100 pages to a (shortish) book. Undergraduate writing requirements: two take-home essay exams (4-5 pages) and a final paper (7-9 pages). For the final paper, students may choose between an exam-question style essay discussing a broad question provided by the professor or a research paper, the topic chosen in consultation with the professor. Students taking the course for Honors credit will write both a final essay and a research paper. Some class sessions may be devoted to workshopping take-home essays and/or presentations of research. Graduate writing requirements: 20+ pages of scholarly prose (4-5 book reviews, a bibliographic or historiographical essay to prepare for prelims, a research paper, a dissertation proposal) as determined by your individual needs. Graduate students will meet separately from undergrads to discuss additional readings from a historiographic perspective. |
Crosslisted with History of Science.
3 credits. H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 9:30 – 10:45 am Prerequisites: Junior Status or Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 505: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course investigates ongoing debates in moral and political philosophy over the nature, source, and shape of social obligations to provide health care coverage to those within a nation’s borders. For the first part of the course, our main task is to understand and evaluate the health care-related implications entailed by currently prominent accounts of social and distributive justice. We will then consider the moral implications of health disparities facing traditionally marginalized sub-populations. Finally, we will investigate the nature, justifiability, and methods of health care rationing, which many believe to be an unavoidable requirement of the near-universally shared goal of health care cost containment. | Crosslisted with Philosophy
3 credits; H (Humanities) A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 507: Instructor: Pablo F. Gomez |
|
| This course examines the history of healing practices in the Western World from antiquity to the 18th century. Students will examine continuities and changes in ideas about illness and health, and the position of healers and health institutions, within larger social and cultural structures in particular historical periods. We will focus on the characteristics of patient-healer relationships and cultural, legal and social perceptions and definitions of body normativity, health and disease in the diverse societies covered under the “Western” rubric. | Cross-listed with History and History of Science
3 credits, H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 531: Instructor: Judith A. Houck |
|
| Women’s relationship to medical institutions, constructions of disease, and their own bodies differs from that of men. This course examines historically the health issues women have faced and how those issues have differed according to race and class. In particular, it explores the personal experiences and the medical views of women’s life-cycle events, the role of women as health care providers and activists, and the effect of gender on the perception and meaning of illness. | Crosslisted with Gender/Women’s Studies and History of Science
3 credits. Biological Science. Counts toward the Natural Science required. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. Tuesday/Thursday 9:30-10:45 am Prerequisites: Junior status or higher (including graduate and professional careers). Excludes university Special and Guest students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the ethical issues central to clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants who master this course material will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation. | Not cross-listed
1 credit; Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Advanced Wednesday 3:30 – 5:25 pm Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 550: Instructor: Dayle DeLancey |
|
| From stethoscopes to He-La cells, medicine’s technological innovations are often among the most novel and controversial aspects of contemporary society. Yet, history reveals that neither the emergence of high-profile medical technologies nor the dilemmas that often accompany their arrival are strictly ‘modern-day’ phenomena. History also demonstrates that such technologies tend to reflect not only the medical science, but also the social concerns, of the periods in which they have emerged. In this course, we will explore the ways in which a range of technologies – e.g. stethoscopes, spirometers, sphygmomanometers, vaccines, hospital design, x-rays, ultrasound, computerized record-keeping, pharmaceuticals, reproductive technologies, gene therapy, artificial hearts and kidneys, virtual medicine, etc. – have at once shaped medicine and invited critique. Using readings from a range of sources that illuminate key medical technologies in the 18th- to 21st-century U.S., we will analyze these technologies in historical, social, and theoretical context. Questions guiding our work will include: What are the historical roots of significant medical technologies? How did these technologies change medical practice? | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits; Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Advanced Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes University special and guest students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course uses philosophical methods to explore central ethical issues raised by climate change. Our two driving questions are (1) Why is climate change an ethical problem?, and (2) What would constitute an ethically defensible response to it? To make headway in answering these questions, we will consider more specifically: whether (and why) we have duties to future generations; whether dominant economic evaluations of climate change are ethically problematic (including whether it is permissible to discount the moral importance of future harms and benefits); whether and how human rights bear on the assignment of climate change-related duties; whether the pattern of historical emissions is relevant to the assignment of such duties; how the current state of global economic development should bear on the assignment of climate change-related duties; whether geoengineering is a permissible response to the climate problem; and whether and how adaptation should figure in the response to climate change. | Not cross-listed
3 credits. Z (Either Humanities or Social Science), A (Advanced) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S Tuesday/Thursday 9:30 – 10:45 am Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher or consent of instructor. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 561: Instructor: John Scarborough |
|
| Greek and Roman medicine and drug lore from the Pre-Socratics to Oribasius (c. 600 B.C. – A.D. 350), including the backgrounds of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian medicine. | Crosslisted with History of Science, History, Classics, and S&A Pharm.
3 credits; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate or Advanced Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or DPH or TOX. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 734-002: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| This seminar is a companion course to the research theme “Disclosing and Enclosing: the Paradoxes of Information Flow in Knowledge Economies” www.sts.wisc.edu/disclosingenclosing. The course deals with the way scientists, policy-makers, ethicists, laypersons, and advocacy groups alike attempt to manage the flow of facts, techniques, and materials by sequestering or sharing them. Yet despite their best efforts at controlling the distribution of knowledge, there are also unanticipated leaks, diversions, revelations and demands for transparency. The ‘right to know’ may also come into direct conflict with intended ‘protections,’ as demonstrated by controversies over the need for privacy of personal health information versus the need to access it for research purposes, the move toward open science versus intellectual property regimes, controversies over the surveillance of everyday citizen activities by consumer data brokers or governments, or the suppression of data for political purposes. Topics will range across many uses of information in science and technology but will focus largely on medicine and bioscience as examples. This interdisciplinary course will employ historical, social and governance literatures embedded in Science and Technology Studies theories and will be of interest to advanced students working on projects on data security, the political nature of information archives, the history of medical surveillance, social and legal concepts of privacy and anonymity in science, technology and medicine, and more. | Crosslisted with STS 903
3 credits Wednesday 9 – 11 am Prerequisites: Grad st or cons inst. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. Instructor Consent Required. |
|
Spring 2015
|
Medical History and Bioethics 133: Instructor: Nicole C. Nelson |
|
| From medical advancements to environmental crises and global food shortages, biology and the life sciences are implicated in some of the most pressing social issues of our time. This course explores events in the history of biology from the mid-twentieth century to today, and examines how developments in this scientific field have shaped and are shaped by society. The course is divided into three thematic units. In the first unit, we investigate the origins of the institutions, technologies, and styles of practice that characterize contemporary biology; such as the use of mice as “model organisms” for understanding human diseases. In the second unit, we delve into areas of biology that have raised controversies about regulation, governance, and public participation; such as the introduction of genetically modified plants into the food supply. The final unit asks how biological facts and theories have been and continue to be used as a source for understanding ourselves. Within the units, each week begins with an examination of an historical event or controversy that provides an entry into a discussion about how biology and society interact. The creation of a cloned sheep named Dolly and the ensuing media coverage and controversy, for example, demonstrates how new reproductive technologies are challenging fundamental categories that we use to describe the life course such as “parent” and “offspring.” This course will help students in the sciences, social sciences, or humanities to develop the analytic and writing skills needed to confront complex social issues involving the life sciences. No prior knowledge of biology, history, or social theory is required. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; Z (either Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) M/W 11:00 AM Prerequisites: None, Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 213: Instructor: Staff |
|
| The course provides an introduction to the intersections of health and environment on a global scale. Exposes students to a range of problems in global environmental health, including climate change, disease ecology, and the globalization of disease. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Tu/Th 1:00PM – 2:15PM |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructor: Dayle DeLancey |
|
| This course surveys the history of public health in the United States from the colonial period to the late twentieth century, emphasizing many issues in the development of public responsibility for health that are relevant at the beginning of the 21st century, including responses to epidemic diseases. The course is run as a seminar/discussion, and part of the student requirements include regular and constructive class participation. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate); M/W 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Instructor consent. Includes graduate and professional careers. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 515: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course focuses on ethical issues implicated in a population-level approach to disease prevention and health promotion. Students will explore prominent theoretical approaches to public health ethics and will engage with several ethical tensions. Issues discussed include: the use of coercive or intrusive public health interventions that restrict individual freedom, infringe upon individual privacy, and/or invite individual harm (or risks of harm); the justification of paternalistic measures in societies or sub-populations that seemingly indulge in pleasurable yet unhealthy behaviors; the need to choose between the identifiable victims we can save with expensive measures here and now and the more numerous unidentifiable victims we could save in the future with the same monetary investment; the trade-offs between maximizing aggregate health benefits and addressing the special needs of vulnerable social sub-groups and individuals; ethical issues in international pharmaceutical research; ethical issues involving vaccination, screening, and surveillance; and the ethics of private gun ownership. | Crosslisted with Philosophy (Phil 515)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced) Tu/Th 9:30AM – 10:45AM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. University specials and guests by permission only. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 532: Instructor: Judith A. Houck |
|
| Perhaps it all started with the nature-nurture debate. By dividing the living world into biology (flesh, blood, genes, hormones, germs) and culture (environment, politics, tradition, commerce, history), we have come to regard bodies as objects immune to historical forces. This course challenges this understanding of bodies. By focusing primarily on American bodies in the 19th and 20th centuries, this course demonstrates that human bodies have social and cultural histories. The lived experience and cultural meanings of human bodies are dependent on their social settings. Biology is surely not irrelevant to bodily experience. But the interpretation and valuation of biology, indeed what is considered biological, change over time. This course will highlight the social values placed on different bodies and the changing social expectations bodies create. This course will pay particular attention to the following questions: How have cultural and social changes in American history influenced the meaning and experience of bodies? How have attempts to establish social status and difference focused on bodies? How has the social and economic value of bodies differed according to race, class, sex, and “fitness?” How has a focus on bodies individualized social problems? | Cross-listed History of Science and with Gender and Women’s Studies
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced) Tu/Th 9:30AM – 10:45AM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructors: Norman C. Fost and Robert K Streiffer |
|
| Ethical issues created by new biomedical technologies, such as genetic screening, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, in vitro fertilization, behavior modification, psychosurgery, and transplantation. | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tu 11:00AM – 12:15PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 562: Instructor: John Scarborough |
|
| Byzantine and Islamic medicine and drug lore from Oribasius to the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance (c. 350 – c. 1400 A.D.). | Crosslisted with S&A Pharmacy, History, History of Science, and Medieval
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tu/Th 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Junior standing or DPH or TOX. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 564: Instructor: Pablo Gomez |
|
| This course examines the history of illness, medical practice and public health in Latin America and the Caribbean from the colonial era to the present. Using films, literature, artwork, archaeological studies, historical texts, and medical sources, students will explore the different meanings of disease, body normativity, medical practice, and public health across different historical circumstances in the region. Among other topics, the course will examine the biological exchange that determined the fate of Native Americans and Europeans in the New World; the role religious and socio-cultural attitudes and beliefs about bodies and illness played in shaping early modern Latin American societies; concepts of race and disease for state and nation-building projects in Latin America; US and European programs of medical research and humanitarianism in Latin American and Caribbean nations during the first half of the twentieth century; medical experimentation in Central America; the impact of the AIDS epidemic in the region; international humanitarianism and the rise of state-sponsored systems of health care in Latin American countries. | Cross-listed with History of Science and History
3 cr.; Z (either Humanities or Social Science), A (Advanced) Tu/Th 11:00AM – 12:15PM Prerequisites: Junior standing or above. Includes Graduate and Professional level. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Robert K. Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology to microorganisms, crops, and non-human animals. Readings cover moral theory, technology studies, political philosophy, the science used in biotechnology, and current regulations governing its use. | Cross-listed with Agronomy, Philosophy, and Community and Environmental Sociology.
3 credits; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. Tu/Th 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 610: Instructor: Linda F. Hogle |
|
| This course is designed to introduce undergraduate stem cell research certificate students and graduate science, law, engineering, and medical students working in regenerative medicine research to the key ethical, policy and social issues relevant to the field. Primary scientific and policy documents will be used as resources as well as analyses of current social and political environments.
Topics include (among others): Understanding the relations among governments, the public & the media in the face of emerging science; research ethics guidelines and oversight; clinical trials; translational issues: data sharing & intellectual property. – THIS COURSE IS TAUGHT AS A CONCENTRATED, SHORT COURSE (8 sessions). – Counts for ethics credit for a number of graduate science programs (check first with your advisor). – MHB 610 may be used as credit for the Undergraduate Certificate in Stem Cell Research. |
Not cross-listed
1 cr (contact instructor for details) M/4:00PM – 6:00 PM; 8 Sessions meet Jan 20-Mar 8, 2015 Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
|
Medical History and Bioethics 709: Instructor: Dayle B. DeLancey |
|
| Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature concerning public health issues and problems in America from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and efforts made toward their solutions. | Not cross-listed
1 cr. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Med Hist 509. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructors: Norman C. Fost and J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course explores central ethical issues and tensions in public health and health policy. There will be eight interactive discussion sessions of 1.5 hours each over a 4-week period. We will begin with a session that explores the merits and hazards of thinking critically about difficult ethical issues. From there we have seven sessions on more specific ethical topics, including: the ethics of population-level screening programs, especially in light of concerns over so-called eugenics; the ethics of laws requiring vaccination for certain diseases; Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial public health legacy in New York City; whether employers have a right to refuse to hire smokers, as many hospitals are now doing; whether it is permissible to ration medical care based on age; the perennial ethical tension between treating those in dire peril now and preventing the deaths of statistical victims in the future; and, finally, relatively new issues of exploitation in public health research trials. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, advanced T/Th 5:30PM – 7:00PM (meets Jan-Feb) Prerequisites: Limited to 4th year medical students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
|
Fall 2014
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Thomas Broman |
|
| General Description: This course presents an introductory survey of the history of medicine from Antiquity to the 20th Century, and is aimed primarily at students interested in careers in the health professions. It explains how the understanding of health and illness has evolved in Western culture, showing why particular ideas of illness came into dominance at different moments in history. Most importantly, by providing the “long perspective” on the history of medicine, the course challenges some widely held assumptions about how the advancement of science has contributed to modern medicine.
The historical survey is divided into four units, each of which is based in a different view of the body. The first unit, called “The Humoral Body” explains the exceptionally flexible ideas of illness and its causes that were first developed in the ancient world and persisted for many centuries until well past 1700. Some of the ideas first developed in humoral medicine, such as the intimate interactions between the body and its environment, are still with us today. The second unit, called “The Anatomical-Morphological Body,” examines the body as a collection of discrete parts which perform particular functions in the body’s overall economy. This anatomical view of the body also developed in the ancient world, although anatomically based approaches to the study of illness really only became influential in the 1700s and 1800s. The third unit, “The Infected Body,” looks at how illness first came to be seen not merely as something affecting individuals, but also as something having important consequences for society as a whole. This kind of thinking first emerged in the wake of the Black Death in 14th-century Europe, and it was important in the development of the Germ Theory of Disease in the latter part of the 19th century. Finally, the fourth unit of the course will look at “The body normalized and measured,” an appropriate label for medicine in the 20th century, when physicians developed the idea that seemingly no one’s health could be maintained without incessant medical attention and supervision. Needless to say, this is the view of health and illness that persists in our own time. In this unit we also consider how health has become something that can be purchased like any other consumer product, as for example in the case of plastic surgery to correct minor flaws in one’s appearance. Course Requirements: Aside from attendance in discussion sections, the basic requirement for the course consists of a mixture of three take-home essays, ranging from three to seven pages, which are based in the readings and meant to illustrate the major issues in each unit. Discussion sections may also feature some shorter and more informal writing assignments. Texts: Xeroxed course reader. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S; Open to Freshmen Monday/Wednesday 2:25 – 3:15 pm, plus a discussion section Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. For honors credit con reg in Hist Sci/Hist Med 284 or cons instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 505: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course will examine ethical issues in the distribution, financing, and delivery of health care in the United States. We will focus in particular on central issues raised by the recent U.S. health care reform debate and resulting legislation. Readings will be drawn from political philosophy, health care economics, behavioral economics, nonprofit thinktank white papers, Congressional testimony, news articles, and blog posts. The first half of the class will consist of units exploring the philosophical and economic bases underlying currently dominant perspectives on putative entitlements to health care. We will seek to understand health economists’ concern to promote the “efficiency” of health resource allocation while constraining the “moral hazard” they detect when individuals use “too much” health care. In this context we will strive to identify values that may either compete with or override concerns with efficiency, so construed. The second half of the class will consist of units investigating the nature, justifiability, and methods of health care rationing-including bedside rationing by doctors-and the myriad issues implicated by the near-universally shared goal of health care cost containment. If time allows, we will further examine one of the following two questions: (1) Are there ethically defensible alternatives to the current patent regime for pharmaceutical development that could reduce drug costs while offering adequate or even enhanced levels of innovation?; (2) What, if anything, does a just government owe immigrants (legal and illegal) when it comes to health care? | Crosslisted with Philosophy
3 credits; H (Humanities) A (Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 507: Instructor: Pablo F. Gomez |
|
| This course examines the history of healing practices in the Western World from antiquity to the 18th century. Students will examine continuities and changes in ideas about illness and health, and the position of healers and health institutions, within larger social and cultural structures in particular historical periods. We will focus on the characteristics of patient-healer relationships and cultural, legal and social perceptions and definitions of body normativity, health and disease in the diverse societies covered under the “Western” rubric. | Cross-listed with History and History of Science
3 credits, H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 513: Instructor: Gregg Mitman |
|
| What explains the distribution of different diseases around the world and how have these patterns changed over time? In what ways have the growth of cities, new industries, extractive economies, mass migrations, and “global colonialism” shaped human health? How has the rise of emerging diseases shaped visions of the global environment?
This course begins to answer such questions by exploring the dynamic interplay between environment and health over the last 300 years. We will consider both the history of ideas about environment and illness as well as the ways in which changing environments have affected well-being. In addition, we will examine how place – from agricultural plantations to the factory floor, from health resorts to toxic waste sites – has mattered to the experience of illness, the production of knowledge, and the control of disease. We will also investigate various social, economic, and political forces that have historically shaped inequitable environmental and disease burdens and the different struggles for health and environmental justice that have occurred across the globe. |
Crosslisted with Environmental Studies and History of Science
3 credits. Either Humanities or Social Science. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Advanced Monday/Wednesday 2:30 – 3:45 pm Prerequisites: Junior status. Graduate students must also register for 713 concurrently with 513. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 526: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| There is a long history of bodily modification for functional restoration, augmentation, enhancement, or aesthetic purposes and may involve chemical, mechanical, interactive or implantable technologies. How do such technological alterations affect our identity? Our sense of being “human”? Our notions of “fairness”? What cultural, social and ethical issues are involved in decisions to take up particular technologies? This course explores examines assumptions about the ‘normal’ body, followed by cultural understandings of ability, appearance, function and enhancement. Topics will include bionics, regenerative medicine, genetic enhancements, assistive technologies, neural prosthetics, cognitive enhancements, digital health and quantified self technologies, among others. The course is of particular interest to students in pre-professional medical fields, biomedical engineers, social sciences, and disability studies. | Not cross-listed
3 credits; Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate Mondays 4:00 pm – 6:40 pm Prerequisites: Sophomore status or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the ethical issues central to clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants who master this course material will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation. | Not cross-listed
1 credit; Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Advanced Wednesday 3:30 – 5:25 pm Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 550: Instructor: Dayle DeLancey |
|
| From imaging devices to pharmaceuticals, medical technologies are often among the most novel and controversial aspects of contemporary society. Yet, U.S. history reveals that neither the emergence of high-profile medical technologies nor the dilemmas that often accompany their arrival are strictly ‘modern-day’ phenomena. History also demonstrates that such technologies tend to reflect not only the medical science, but also the social concerns, of the periods in which they have emerged. In this course, we will explore the ways in which a range of technologies – e.g. stethoscopes, spirometers, sphygmomanometers, hospital design, x-rays, reproductive technologies, gene therapy, virtual medicine, etc. – have at once shaped medicine and invited critique. Using readings from a range of sources illuminating key medical technologies in the 18th- to 21st-century U.S., we will analyze these technologies in historical, social, and theoretical context. Questions guiding our work will include: What are the historical roots of significant medical technologies? How did these technologies shape medicine? Why have physicians and the pubic embraced some medical technologies and not others? What non-medical technologies have influenced the development of medical technologies? How has the historiography of medical technology shaped the histories of medicine and science as academic disciplines? Has medical technology ever been “value free”? | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits; Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Advanced Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes University special and guest students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 553: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| Intense concern over the burgeoning of emerging infectious diseases–along with the renewed vigor of known epidemics-has heightened medical, media, and popular attention to the international dimensions of health in a globalizing society. Yet historians have long recognized the “microbial unification of the world” as a phenomenon that dates at least to the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of historical and anthropological materials and methods, this course explores the history of public health and medicine as international phenomena, concentrating chiefly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specific topics include the connections between global pandemics such as cholera and plague to European colonial expansion; the rise of international aid organizations; historical and contemporary anxieties about global migration and the spread of disease; and the international dimensions of a global medical marketplace. Particular themes include the connection between culture and medical ideas and practices; and the tensions of practicing medicine in multi-cultural settings.
Graduate students registered in 553 must register concurrently in MHB 753. |
Crosslisted with History of Science and with Population Health
3 credits; Either Humanities or Social Science. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. Tuesday/Thursday 1:00 – 2:15 pm (plus discussion session) Prerequisites: Junior or Senior status, or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 561: Instructor: John Scarborough |
|
| Greek and Roman medicine and drug lore from the Pre-Socratics to Oribasius (c. 600 B.C. – A.D. 350), including the backgrounds of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian medicine. | Crosslisted with History of Science, History, Classics, and S&A Pharm.
3 credits; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate or Advanced Tuesday/Thursday 2:30 – 3:45pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or DPH or TOX. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-001: Instructor: Andrew R. Ruis |
|
| This course explores the relationship between health and citizenship. Among its key themes are the following questions: When did the link between health and human rights first emerge? How has it developed historically? What factors define citizenship? To what extent does physical and mental health constitute a gauge of enfranchisement and of one’s access to power in the modern state? In what ways does the de facto absence of citizenship – in cases like those of ethnic minorities, the desperately poor, and colonial subject populations – delimit the possibility of a human right to health? How have structural health inequities historically posed significant threats to global security? Such questions have been central to studies of the political economy of health and disease, anthropology, and area studies, but have been less apparent in historical research. This course offers a key means for integrating these questions into an interdisciplinary approach to global health.
The course will focus primarily on the development of the relationship between health and citizenship in modern Europe beginning with the French Revolution and through the rise of the welfare state before exploring the implications of ideas about health and human rights in a global context. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits Tuesday/Thursday 11:00 am – 12:15 pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 credits; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 713: Instructor: Gregg Mitman |
|
| A satellite graduate seminar that explores the issues covered in 513 in greater depth, required of graduate students enrolled in Med Hist 513 | Crosslisted with Environmental Studies and History of Science
1 credit Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status and concurrent registration in Med Hist 513. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 726: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| There is a long history of bodily modification for functional restoration, augmentation, enhancement, or aesthetic purposes and may involve chemical, mechanical, interactive or implantable technologies. How do such technological alterations affect our identity? Our sense of being “human”? Our notions of “fairness”? What cultural, social and ethical issues are involved in decisions to take up particular technologies? This course explores examines assumptions about the ‘normal’ body, followed by cultural understandings of ability, appearance, function and enhancement. Topics will include bionics, regenerative medicine, genetic enhancements, assistive technologies, neural prosthetics, cognitive enhancements, digital health and quantified self technologies, among others. The course is of particular interest to students in pre-professional medical fields, biomedical engineers, social sciences, and disability studies.
Graduate students taking 726 will concurrently enroll in 526 and pursue independent research in consultation with the instructor. |
Not cross-listed
1 credit Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status and concurrent registration in Med Hist 526 or consent of Instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 734: Instructor: R. Alta Charo |
|
| This course will survey examples of classic public health efforts mediated through law, including surveillance, screening, quarantine, vaccination, birth control, sanitation, food safety, nutrition, and physical fitness. It will also touch on some modern areas of activity, such as newborn genetic screening, smoking cessation, accident prevention, gun control, domestic violence reporting, and obesity reduction. There is no course book, but assignments will be drawn from articles in history, philosophy, political science, medicine, public health and law, as well from videos and digital archives. The course is open to enrollment from all students at the law school and to graduate level students from the School of Medicine and Public Health (i.e. MD or master’s programs, and above). In lieu of a final exam, students will prepare final papers from a list of current topics. Topics and expectations will be adjusted to coordinate with the students’ various degree programs, so that law students will write papers focused more on legal issues, SMPH students on medical and public health issues etc. Students will be graded separately, within their respective degree programs. Con Law 1 and 2 are not prerequisites, but are recommended for the law students, especially when considering the civil rights issues raised by government efforts to control personal behaviors. | Meets with Law and Population Health
2 credits Wednesday 3:30 – 5:30 pm Prerequisites: Grad st or cons inst. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 753: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| See MHB 553. Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature. | Not cross-listed
1 credit. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status & concurrent registration in Medical History 553. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructors: Susan Lederer and Linda Hogle |
|
| “Public health is purchasable,” Hermann Biggs, Chief of the Public Health Department of New York City famously said. So are many other things associated with health: medical care (including nursing and rehabilitation therapies), healing treatments (pharmaceuticals, herbal medicines, diet supplements, vitamin water, prosthetics, implants, organs). This graduate seminar uses theoretical and historical methods in considering the ways in which medicine and commerce are interrelated, from the commercialization of the blood supply, tissue, organ, “egg donation,” 23andme, FitBit data, dietary supplements and diet plans, and even care itself. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits Wednesday 9:00 – 11:00 am Prerequisites: Graduate status and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 credits Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. Instructor Consent Required. |
|
Spring 2014
|
Medical History and Bioethics 133: Instructor: Nicole C. Nelson |
|
| From medical advancements to environmental crises and global food shortages, biology and the life sciences are implicated in some of the most pressing social issues of our time. This course explores events in the history of biology from the mid twentieth century to today, and examines how developments in this scientific field have shaped and are shaped by society. The course is divided into three thematic units. In the first unit, we investigate the origins of the institutions, technologies, and styles of practice that characterize contemporary biology; such as the use of mice as “model organisms” for understanding human diseases. In the second unit, we delve into areas of biology that have raised controversies about regulation, governance, and public participation; such as the introduction of genetically modified plants into the food supply. The final unit asks how biological facts and theories have been and continue to be used as a source for understanding ourselves. Within the units, each week begins with an examination of an historical event or controversy that provides an entry into a discussion about how biology and society interact. The creation of a cloned sheep named Dolly and the ensuing media coverage and controversy, for example, demonstrates how new reproductive technologies are challenging fundamental categories that we use to describe the life course such as “parent” and “offspring.” This course will help students in the sciences, social sciences, or humanities to develop the analytic and writing skills needed to confront complex social issues involving the life sciences. No prior knowledge of biology, history, or social theory is required. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; Z (either Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) M/W 11:00 AM Prerequisites: None, Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Thomas Broman |
|
| A survey of different conceptions of how the body as a site of sickness has been understood from Antiquity to contemporary medicine. Includes consideration of the origins and evolution of public health, the changing social role of healers, and the emergence of the modern “standardized” body in health and illness. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 Credits and Elementary (E) level M/W 2:25PM – 3:15PM |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 213: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| The course provides an introduction to the intersections of health and environment on a global scale. Exposes students to a range of problems in global environmental health, including climate change, disease ecology, and the globalization of disease. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; H (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Tu/Th 1:00PM – 2:15PM |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 505: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course will examine ethical issues in the distribution, financing, and delivery of health care (primarily in reference to the United States, but with potential reference to other advanced nations). The class is broken into three units. The first unit explores key issues in U.S. health policy and forms the empirical foundation for the ethical analyses that follow. The second unit explores ongoing debates in moral and political philosophy over putative rights to health and health care. The last unit investigates the nature, justifiability, and methods of health care rationing, which many believe to be an unavoidable requirement of the near-universally shared goal of health care cost containment. | Crosslisted with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities) A (Advanced) T/TH 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. University specials and guests by permission only. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 508: Instructor: Bradley M. Moore |
|
| Medicine in Europe from the 18th century to mid-20th century, investigating changes in disease and demography, state interest in health care, the medical professions, and both scientific and alternative medical ideas. | Crosslisted with History and History of Science
3 cr.; H (Humanities) I (Intermediate) M/W 1:00PM – 2:15PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Instructor consent. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructors: Dayle DeLancey and Karen L. Walloch |
|
| This course surveys the history of public health in the United States from the colonial period to the late twentieth century, emphasizing many issues in the development of public responsibility for health that are relevant at the beginning of the 21st century, including responses to epidemic diseases. The course is run as a seminar/discussion, and part of the student requirements include regular and constructive class participation. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate); M/W 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Instructor consent. Includes graduate and professional careers. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 515: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course focuses on ethical issues implicated in a population-level approach to disease prevention and health promotion. Students will explore prominent theoretical approaches to public health ethics and will engage with several ethical tensions. Issues discussed include: the use of coercive or intrusive public health interventions that restrict individual freedom, infringe upon individual privacy, and/or invite individual harm (or risks of harm); the justification of paternalistic measures in societies or sub-populations that seemingly indulge in pleasurable yet unhealthy behaviors; the extent to which societies should hold individuals responsible for their health conditions; the need to choose between the identifiable victims we can save with expensive measures here and now and the more numerous unidentifiable victims we could save in the future with the same monetary investment; the trade-offs between maximizing aggregate health benefits and addressing the special needs of vulnerable social sub-groups and individuals; climate change and intergenerational justice; ethical issues in international pharmaceutical research; and the health-equity implications of prominent social determinants of health. | Crosslisted with Philosophy (Phil 515)
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced) Tu/Th 9:30AM – 10:45AM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. University specials and guests by permission only. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 523: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| The problem of the 20th century, wrote W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), “is the problem of the color-line.” This course considers the issue of the color line in American medicine over the past two centuries. We will be looking at the ways in which skin color (and other elements of “racial identity”) have influenced the experiences of patients, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers, seeking to document and analyze how conceptions of race have shaped the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past two hundred years. Topics include the origins of racial classification, the health and medical care of slaves, the use of minorities as research subjects, especially the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the history of racial disparities in medicine, and the efforts to integrate the American medical profession. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Afro-American Studies
3 cr.; S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced) M/W 11:00AM – 12:15PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 531: Instructor: Judith A. Houck |
|
| Women’s relationship to medical institutions, constructions of disease, and their own bodies differs from that of men. This course examines historically the health issues women have faced and how those issues have differed according to race and class. In particular, it explores the personal experiences and the medical views of women’s life-cycle events, the role of women as health care providers and activists, and the effect of gender on the perception and meaning of illness. | Crosslisted with Gender/Women’s Studies and History of Science
3 credits. Biological Science. Counts toward the Natural Science required. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. T/TH 1:00PM – 2:15PM Prerequisites: Junior status or higher (including graduate and professional careers). Excludes university Special and Guest students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructor: Norman C. Fost |
|
| Ethical issues apparently created by new biomedical technologies, such as genetic screening, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, in vitro fertilization, behavior modification, psychosurgery, and transplantation. | Crosslisted with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tu 11:00AM – 12:15PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 562: Instructor: John Scarborough |
|
| Byzantine and Islamic medicine and drug lore from Oribasius to the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance (c. 350 – c. 1400 A.D.). | Crosslisted with S&A Pharmacy, History, History of Science, and Medieval
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tu/Th 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Junior standing or DPH or TOX. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Robert K. Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology to microorganisms, crops, and non-human animals. Readings cover moral theory, technology studies, political philosophy, the science used in biotechnology, and current regulations governing its use. | Crosslisted with Agronomy, Philosophy, and Community and Environmental Sociology
3 credits; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. Tu/Th 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 610: Instructor: Linda F. Hogle |
|
| This course is designed to introduce graduate science, engineering, and medical students working in regenerative medicine research to the key ethical, policy and social issues relevant to the field. Primary scientific and policy documents will be used as resources as well as analyses of current social and political environments.
Topics include (among others): The background of legal disputes over embryonic stem cell research; Understanding the relations among governments, the public & the media in the face of controversial research; Guidelines and oversight rules: what stem cell researchers need to know; Clinical trials & First-in-human research; Translational issues: data sharing & intellectual property. NOTE: THIS COURSE IS TAUGHT AS A CONCENTRATED, SHORT COURSE (8 sessions). Counts for ethics credit for a number of graduate science programs (check first with your advisor). |
Not cross-listed
1 – 3 units (contact instructor for details) F 8:00AM – 10:00AM Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. |
|
|
Medical History and Bioethics 709: Instructors: Dayle B. DeLancey and Karen L. Walloch |
|
| Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature concerning public health issues and problems in America from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and efforts made toward their solutions. | Not cross-listed
1 cr. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Med Hist 509. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 720: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| History is more than names and dates. Historical perspective helps us to understand why we do the things we do or why we think the things we think. A historical perspective on medicine helps to explain how and why medicine, healing, disease, and even doctors have changed over time. This course will focus on the development of medical ideas from Hippocrates to the Human Genome Project. In so doing, students will consider the historical evolution of anatomy as an important component of medicine (and how different societies have viewed dissection), the historical evolution of concepts of disease and disease localization, the historical evolution of remedies – animal, vegetable, mineral – , the historical evolution of the doctor-patient relationship, and the development of medical specialization, technologies, and public health. The course will also be tailored in light of the residency choices of medical students to focus on developments in particular specialties (ie ob-gyn, pediatrics, surgery, psychiatry, family medicine, etc). | Not cross-listed
1 cr. W 5:00PM – 7:00PM Prerequisites: Limited to medical students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructors: Norman C. Fost and J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course explores central ethical issues and tensions in public health and health policy. There will be eight interactive discussion sessions of 1.5 hours each over a 4-week period. We will begin with a session that explores the merits and hazards of thinking critically about difficult ethical issues. From there we have seven sessions on more specific ethical issues in population health. Potential topics include: the economic and moral considerations for and against government involvement in health care markets; the vexing question of whether citizens in advanced nations have strong duties to promote the health and well-being of the foreign poor; whether U.S. hospitals have duties to provide “uncompensated care” (read: free care) to undocumented immigrants, and whether these hospitals may ethically seek the deportation of undocumented individuals; alternative approaches to rationing health care; the perennial ethical tension between treating those in dire peril now and preventing the deaths of statistical victims in the future; personal responsibility for risky health behaviors and the government’s role in influencing health behaviors; and, finally, cutting-edge issues of exploitation in public health research trials. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, advanced T/Th 5:30PM – 7:00PM (Jan-Feb) Prerequisites: Limited to 4th year medical students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructors: Pablo Gomez (MHB) and Neil Kodesh (History) |
|
| This cross-disciplinary graduate student seminar examines historical and anthropological approaches to the study of health, healing and science in Africa and the African Diaspora.
The study of health and science in Africa and the diaspora is more capacious than ever before. This course will focus on new approaches to examining the multiple histories of medicine and illness in Africa. It will place into dialogue the historical literature on health and disease in Africa and the African diaspora. We will pay particular attention to historical and anthropological approaches that challenge the relevance of the deeply embedded polarities – traditional versus modern, African healing versus biomedicine – that have long inspired studies of medicine and illness in Africa. The course will emphasize the interdisciplinarity that has placed the study of health and healing in African studies at the forefront of complicating ideas about medicine, illness and therapy. Sponsored by a Mellon foundation grant, four leading national and international scholars in the field will visit the class to discuss their work. (Course Flyer) |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits. A (Advanced) W 1:20PM – 3:20PM Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
|
Fall 2013
|
Medical History and Bioethics 431: Instructor: Karen L. Walloch |
|
| American women’s childbirth experiences from the colonial period to the present. Childbirth as a cultural as well as a biological event. Basic physiological information for understanding and evaluating changing approaches to pregnancy and childbirth. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Gender and Women’s Studies.
3 credits; S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tuesday/Thursday 1:00PM-2:15PM Prerequisites: Prerequisites: Women St 103 or 430 or equiv; or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 504: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| What is the best way to stay well in the United States, and to whom should we listen as patients, potential patients, and family members? This course looks at the ways in which Americans have tried to maximize their health and longevity through a variety of means, including medicine, doctors and nurses; through alternative practitioners; and through their own efforts to influence their health outcomes.
Topics include the rise, fall and rise of medical authority, the development of alternative and complementary medicine and health care, the efforts at health reform, and the health establishment (ranging from gyms, dietary intervention, health clinics, hospitals, etc.) The course focuses on the choices everyday Americans made about their own sicknesses, injuries, and health; and on the sources of information they used to make these decisions. |
Crosslisted with History and History of Science.
3 credits. Biological Science. Counts toward the Natural Science requirement. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. Monday/Wednesday 11:00am-12:15pm Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. And must be Junior status or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 507: Instructor: Pablo F. Gomez |
|
| This course examines the history of healing practices in the Western World from antiquity to the 18th century. Students will examine continuities and changes in ideas about illness and health, and the position of healers and health institutions, within larger social and cultural structures in particular historical periods. We will focus on the characteristics of patient-healer relationships and cultural, legal and social perceptions and definitions of body normativity, health and disease in the diverse societies covered under the “Western” rubric. | Cross-listed with History and History of Science.
3 credits. Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. Tuesday/Thursday 11:00am-12:15pm Prerequisites: Must be Junior status or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman C. Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the ethical issues central to clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants who master this course material will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation. | Not cross-listed
1 credit. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Advanced. Wednesday 3:30pm-5:30pm Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-001: Instructor: Rob K. Streiffer |
|
| An in-depth study for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students of the main philosophical theories in animal ethics and a survey of the ways that empirical research is important for evaluating the truth of those theories as well as for understanding their practical implications. Although the exact content will vary from year to year, topics covered will include the moral status of animals, different conceptions of animal welfare, animals’ mental lives, the use of animals in research, and the use of animals in agriculture. Additional topics could include disobedience on behalf of animals and the legal and regulatory aspects of animal use oversight. | Not cross-listed
3 credits. Thursdays 2:25pm-4:55pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 561: Instructor: John Scarborough |
|
| Greek and Roman medicine and drug lore from the Pre-Socratics to Oribasius (c. 600 B.C. – A.D. 350), including the backgrounds of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian medicine. | Crosslisted with History of Science, History, Classics, and S&A Pharm.
3 credits. Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate or Advanced. Tuesday/Thursday 2:30pm-3:45pm Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or DPH or TOX. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 734: Instructors: Linda Hogle and Krishanu Saha |
|
| This seminar will explore social and ethical issues arising in the use of contemporary biosciences, focusing on three broad areas: the ownership and control over data produced in the course of research, new ways of defining disease through in vitro modeling, and the increasingly blurring boundaries between research and clinical practice. Work in these areas is anticipated to form the basis of a transformative healthcare paradigm that delivers personalized and precision medicine. Seminar is for advanced students in the social sciences, law, philosophy of science, science and technology studies, political science, and public health. (course description from an upcoming UW STS Newsletter)
Professional and medical students are welcome. (course poster) |
Not cross-listed
3 credits. Tuesday 3:30pm-5:25pm Prerequisites: Graduate/ Professional Level status only or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Dayle DeLancey |
|
| As of 2013, humankind has succeeded in the global eradication of only two diseases – smallpox (1979) and rinderpest (2011). Yet the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Carter Center International Task Force for Disease Eradication have targeted six other diseases for eradication with variable success, redoubling their efforts to eradicate two while ultimately abandoning campaigns to eradicate four others. What are the historical antecedents of 20th and 21st century campaigns to eradicate infectious diseases in global host populations? Why are certain diseases considered “eradicable” and how has that concept changed over time? What determines the success or failure of an eradication campaign and how has history shaped these factors? How do global eradication attempts differ from more familiar efforts to control or eliminate diseases like HIV/AIDS within smaller populations – and what is the historical significance of such distinctions? This graduate seminar addresses these questions, placing global infectious disease eradication efforts into a wider context that encompasses several centuries of history. The seminar focuses upon three very different diseases that illuminate wider historical dilemmas and other disease contexts: smallpox (the global eradication “success story” that prefigured the eradication of rinderpest and shaped the view that polio and guinea worm disease were suited for global eradication campaigns), malaria (an eradication “failure” whose abandoned eradication campaign parallels those of hookworm, yaws, and yellow fever), and HIV/AIDS (a global scourge for which control or elimination seem more prudent than eradication). | Crosslisted with History of Science.
3 credits. A (Advanced). Monday 2:00pm-4:00pm Prerequisites: Graduate /Professional Level status only and consent of instructor. |
Summer 2013
|
Medical History and Bioethics 431: Instructor: Karen L. Walloch |
|
| American women’s childbirth experiences from the colonial period to the present. Childbirth as a cultural as well as a biological event. Basic physiological information for understanding and evaluating changing approaches to pregnancy and childbirth. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Gender and Women’s Studies
3 cr.; S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced) MoTuWeTh 1:00PM – 4:00PM , STERLING 1313 Prerequisites: Women St 103 or 430 or equiv; or cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 734: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course explores central ethical issues raised by climate change. Issues to be addressed include: whether individuals have responsibilities to curb or eliminate their climate emissions; whether states or nations have distinctly political duties to address climate change; the ethical bases of economic evaluations of climate change; whether it is proper to discount the moral importance of harms that will occur in the future; how properly to evaluate changes in the size and makeup of human populations; and which nations (if any) ought to sacrifice development and/or increases in living standards in order to lower the risk of catastrophic climate events. Course evaluation will be based primarily on one short paper and a longer term-paper. | Not cross-listed
2 cr.; S (Biological Science) 9:00-12:00 MTWTF (Meets Tuesday May 28, 2013 – Monday June 10, 2013, from 9am-12pm daily in 1116 Biochem) Prerequisites: Grad student or instructor consent |
Spring 2013
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Thomas Broman |
|
| This course presents an introductory survey of the history of medicine from Antiquity to the 20th Century, and is aimed primarily at students interested in careers in the health professions. It explains how the understanding of health and illness has evolved in Western culture, showing why particular ideas of illness came into dominance at different moments in history. Most importantly, by providing the “long perspective” on the history of medicine, the course attempts to challenge some widely held assumptions about how the advancement of science has contributed to modern medicine. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) M/W 2:25PM – 3:15PM Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. For honors credit con reg in Hist Sci/Hist Med 284 or cons instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 213: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| The course provides an introduction to the intersections of health and environment on a global scale. Exposes students to a range of problems in global environmental health, including climate change, disease ecology, and the globalization of disease. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; H (Humanities or Social Science), E (Elementary) Tu/Th 1:00PM – 2:15PM |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 284: Instructor: Thomas H. Broman |
|
| Honors course for students enrolled concurrently for honors in History of Science 212. Open to non-honors students with consent of instructor. | Cross-listed with History of Science
1 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) F 1:20PM – 2:10PM Prerequisites: Con reg for honors in Hist Sci/Hist Med 212 or cons inst. Open to Fr. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 507: Instructor: Pablo F. Gomez |
|
| This course examines the history of healing practices in the Western World from antiquity to the 18th century. Students will examine continuities and changes in ideas about illness and health and the role of medicine in the larger social and cultural context of particular historical periods. | Cross-listed with History and History of Science.
3 cr., H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tu/Th 9:30AM – 10:45AM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructor: Dayle DeLancey |
|
| This course surveys the history of public health in the United States from the colonial period to the late twentieth century, emphasizing many issues in the development of public responsibility for health that are relevant at the beginning of the 21st century, including responses to epidemic diseases. The course is run as a seminar/discussion, and part of the student requirements include regular and constructive class participation. | Cross-listed with History of Science
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate); M/W 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 515: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course focuses on ethical issues implicated in a population-level approach to disease prevention and health promotion. Students will explore prominent theoretical approaches to public health ethics and will engage with several ethical tensions. Issues discussed include: the use of coercive or intrusive public health interventions that restrict individual freedom, infringe upon individual privacy, and/or invite individual harm (or risks of harm); the justification of paternalistic measures in societies or sub-populations that seemingly indulge in pleasurable yet unhealthy behaviors; the extent to which societies should hold individuals responsible for their health conditions; the need to choose between the identifiable victims we can save with expensive measures here and now and the more numerous unidentifiable victims we could save in the future with the same monetary investment; the trade-offs between maximizing aggregate health benefits and addressing the special needs of vulnerable social sub-groups and individuals; climate change and intergenerational justice; ethical issues in international pharmaceutical research; and the health-equity implications of prominent social determinants of health. | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced) Tu/Th 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Junior standing or Senior standing or Graduate standing required. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 523: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| The problem of the 20th century, wrote W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), “is the problem of the color-line.” This course considers the issue of the color line in American medicine over the past two centuries. We will be looking at the ways in which skin color (and other elements of “racial identity”) have influenced the experiences of patients, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers, seeking to document and analyze how conceptions of race have shaped the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past two hundred years. Topics include the origins of racial classification, the health and medical care of slaves, the use of minorities as research subjects, especially the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the history of racial disparities in medicine, and the efforts to integrate the American medical profession. | Cross-listed with History of Science and with Afro-American Studies
3 cr.; S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tu/Th 11:00AM – 12:15PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 532: Instructor: Judith A. Houck |
|
| Perhaps it all started with the nature-nurture debate. By dividing the living world into biology (flesh, blood, genes, hormones, germs) and culture (environment, politics, tradition, commerce, history), we have come to regard bodies as objects immune to historical forces. This course challenges this understanding of bodies. By focusing primarily on American bodies in the 19th and 20th centuries, this course demonstrates that human bodies have social and cultural histories. The lived experience and cultural meanings of human bodies are dependent on their social settings. Biology is surely not irrelevant to bodily experience. But the interpretation and valuation of biology, indeed what is considered biological, change over time. This course will highlight the social values placed on different bodies and the changing social expectations bodies create. This course will pay particular attention to the following questions: How have cultural and social changes in American history influenced the meaning and experience of bodies? How have attempts to establish social status and difference focused on bodies? How has the social and economic value of bodies differed according to race, class, sex, and “fitness?” How has a focus on bodies individualized social problems? | Cross-listed History of Science and with Gender and Women’s Studies
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced) Tu/Th 9:30AM – 10:45AM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructor: Norman C. Fost |
|
| Ethical issues apparently created by new biomedical technologies, such as genetic screening, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, in vitro fertilization, behavior modification, psychosurgery, and transplantation. | Cross-listed with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tu 11:00AM – 12:15PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 562: Instructor: John Scarborough |
|
| Byzantine and Islamic medicine and drug lore from Oribasius to the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance (c. 350-c. 1400 A.D.). | Crosslisted with S&A Pharmacy, History, History of Science, and Medieval
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tu/Th 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Junior standing or DPH or TOX |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Robert Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology to microorganisms, crops, and non-human animals. Readings cover moral theory, technology studies, political philosophy, the science used in biotechnology, and current regulations governing its use. | Cross-listed with Agronomy, Philosophy, and Community and Environmental Sociology.
3 credits; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. 2:25 – 4:55pm Mondays Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-001: Instructor: Pablo F. Gomez |
|
| This course examines the history of illness and medical practice in Latin America and the Caribbean from the colonial era until the present. Using an interdisciplinary set of sources, students will explore the different meanings of disease, body normativity, medical practice, and ideas about public health across different historical circumstances in the region. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) Tu/Th 1:00PM – 2:15PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 709: Instructor: Dayle B. DeLancey |
|
| Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature concerning public health issues and problems in America from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and efforts made toward their solutions. | Not cross-listed
1 cr. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Med Hist 509. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructors: Norman C. Fost and J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course will explore central ethical issues in public health and health policy in eight interactive discussion sessions of 1.5 hours each over a 4-week period, probably 5:30-7:00pm Tuesday and Thursday, but the time may be modified if more convenient for the majority.
Course topics will include: Alternative approaches to rationing health care (triage and policy levels) and their relative merits; the shape of rights to health and health care; measuring health states to determine the effectiveness of public health interventions (QALYs and DALYs); paternalism and personal responsibility for risky health behaviors; determinants of health, including the effects of income inequality and relative social status (“The Status Syndrome”); the role of genetic predisposition in allocating resources; distinctions between positive rights (entitlements) and negative rights (immunities) and their implication for public health policy; duties to future generations. |
Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, advanced Tu/Th 5:30PM – 7:00PM (Jan-Feb) Prerequisites: Limited to 4th year medical students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Richard C. Keller |
|
| Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
|
Fall 2012
|
Medical History and Bioethics 333: Instructor: Lynn Nyhart |
|
| Survey of major developments in biology and related sciences, ca. 1700-1950. Topics include morphology and embryology; evolutionary theory, ecology, and genetics: physiology and recent experimental biology. | Crosslisted with History of Science.
3 credits. Biological Science. Counts toward the Natural Science requirement. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. 2:30pm – 3:45pm MW Prerequisites: Junior Status or Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 504: Instructor: Andrew Ruis |
|
| This courses examines the social and cultural history of sickness and health in the United States. Topics include the rise of medical authority, challenges to medical orthodoxy (alternative and complementary medicine), and the patient’s experience of illness. | Crosslisted with History and History of Science.
3 credits. Biological Science. Counts toward the Natural Science requirement. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. 11:00am – 12:15pm MW Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. And must be Junior status or higher (including graduate and professional careers). Excludes university Special and Guest students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 505: Instructor: J. Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course will examine ethical issues in the distribution, financing, and delivery of health care in the United States. We will focus in particular on central issues raised by the recent U.S. health care reform debate and resulting legislation. Readings will be drawn from political philosophy, health care economics, behavioral economics, nonprofit thinktank white papers, Congressional testimony, news articles, and blog posts. The first half of the class will consist of units exploring the philosophical and economic bases underlying currently dominant perspectives on putative entitlements to health care. We will seek to understand health economists’ concern to promote the “efficiency” of health resource allocation while constraining the “moral hazard” they detect when individuals use “too much” health care. In this context we will strive to identify values that may either compete with or override concerns with efficiency, so construed. The second half of the class will consist of units investigating the nature, justifiability, and methods of health care rationing-including bedside rationing by doctors-and the myriad issues implicated by the near-universally shared goal of health care cost containment. If time allows, we will further examine one of the following two questions: (1) Are there ethically defensible alternatives to the current patent regime for pharmaceutical development that could reduce drug costs while offering adequate or even enhanced levels of innovation?; (2) What, if anything, does a just government owe immigrants (legal and illegal) when it comes to health care? | Not cross-listed
3 credits. 11:00am-12:15pm T/TH Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 531: Instructor: Karen L. Walloch |
|
| Women’s relationship to medical institutions, constructions of disease, and their own bodies differs from that of men. This course examines historically the health issues women have faced and how those issues have differed according to race and class. In particular, it explores the personal experiences and the medical views of womens life-cycle events, the role of women as health care providers and activists, and the effect of gender on the perception and meaning of illness. | Crosslisted with Gender/Women’s Studies and History of Science.
3 credits. Biological Science. Counts toward the Natural Science required. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. 9:30am-10:45am T/TH Prerequisites: Junior status or higher (including graduate and professional careers). Excludes university Special and Guest students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the ethical issues central to clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants who master this course material will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation. | Not cross-listed
1 credit. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Advanced. 3:30pm-5:30pm W Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 550: Instructor: Dayle DeLancey |
|
| From imaging devices to pharmaceuticals, medical technologies are often among the most novel and controversial aspects of contemporary society. Yet, U.S. history reveals that neither the emergence of high-profile medical technologies nor the dilemmas that often accompany their arrival are strictly ‘modern-day’ phenomena. History also demonstrates that such technologies tend to reflect not only the medical science, but also the social concerns, of the periods in which they have emerged. In this course, we will explore the ways in which a range of technologies – e.g. stethoscopes, spirometers, sphygmomanometers, hospital design, x-rays, reproductive technologies, gene therapy, virtual medicine, etc. – have at once shaped medicine and invited critique. Using readings from a range of sources illuminating key medical technologies in the 18th- to 21st-century U.S., we will analyze these technologies in historical, social, and theoretical context. Questions guiding our work will include: What are the historical roots of significant medical technologies? How did these technologies shape medicine? Why have physicians and the pubic embraced some medical technologies and not others? What non-medical technologies have influenced the development of medical technologies? How has the historiography of medical technology shaped the histories of medicine and science as academic disciplines? Has medical technology ever been “value free”? | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Advanced. 1:00pm-2:15pm T/TH Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes University special and guest students. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 553: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| Intense concern over the burgeoning of emerging infectious diseases–along with the renewed vigor of known epidemics–has heightened medical, media, and popular attention to the international dimensions of health in a globalizing society. Yet historians have long recognized the “microbial unification of the world” as a phenomenon that dates at least to the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of historical and anthropological materials and methods, this course explores the history of public health and medicine as international phenomena, concentrating chiefly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specific topics include the connections between global pandemics such as cholera and plague to European colonial expansion; the rise of international aid organizations; historical and contemporary anxieties about global migration and the spread of disease; and the international dimensions of a global medical marketplace. Particular themes include the connection between culture and medical ideas and practices; and the tensions of practicing medicine in multi-cultural settings.
Graduate students registered in 553 must register concurrently in MHB 753. |
Crosslisted with History of Science and with Population Health.
3 credits. Either Humanities or Social Science. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. 2:30pm-3:45pm T/TH (plus discussion session) Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher, includes graduate and professional careers. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-002: Instructor: Rob Streiffer |
|
| An in-depth study for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students of the main philosophical theories in animal ethics and a survey of the ways that empirical research is important for evaluating the truth of those theories as well as for understanding their practical implications. Although the exact content will vary from year to year, topics covered will include the moral status of animals, different conceptions of animal welfare, animals’ mental lives, the use of animals in research, and the use of animals in agriculture. Additional topics could include disobedience on behalf of animals and the legal and regulatory aspects of animal use oversight. | Crosslisted with Philosophy 543-002.
3 credits. 2:25pm-4:55pm M Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 561: Instructor: John Scarborough |
|
| Greek and Roman medicine and drug lore from the Pre-Socratics to Oribasius (c. 600 B.C. – A.D. 350), including the backgrounds of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian medicine. | Crosslisted with History of Science, History, Classics, and S&A Pharm.
3 credits. Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate or Advanced. 2:30pm-3:45pm T/TH Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or DPH or TOX. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 753: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| See MHB 553. Advanced readings that examine major problems in modern international health. Focus on epidemiology and disease ecology; political economy of health; migration; quarantine; international health research; cross-cultural healing; mental and maternal health; growth of international health organizations. | Not cross-listed
1 credit. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status & concurrent registration in Medical History 553. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructors: Ronald Numbers and Judith Leavitt |
|
| Each week during the semester we will read an assigned book. Each student in the seminar will assume responsibility for leading one or two class discussions (depending on enrollment), will write reviews (suitable for publication in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine) of 5 of the assigned books, and will write a final historiographical essay of no more than 10 double-spaced, typed pages, explaining how the assigned books reinforce or modify the narrative of American medicine present in the first half of Paul Starr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982). Graduate students who have passed prelims are encouraged to register for the course. Their requirements are to keep up with the reading and come to seminar prepared to participate in the discussion; they are not required to do the written assignments. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits. A (Advanced) Noon – 2:00pm Tuesday Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional Level status only and consent of instructor. |
Spring 2012
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Thomas Broman |
|
| This course presents an introductory survey of the history of medicine from Antiquity to the 20th Century, and is aimed primarily at students interested in careers in the health professions. It explains how the understanding of health and illness has evolved in Western culture, showing why particular ideas of illness came into dominance at different moments in history. Most importantly, by providing the “long perspective” on the history of medicine, the course attempts to challenge some widely held assumptions about how the advancement of science has contributed to modern medicine. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) M/W 2:25PM – 3:15PM Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. For honors credit con reg in Hist Sci/Hist Med 284 or cons instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 284: Instructor: Thomas Broman |
|
| This course is a one-credit honors option that accompanies HOS/HOM 212. By signing up for this course and registering simultaneously for honors in 212, you will receive 4 credits of honors course work. Because we meet in a seminar-type discussion format, enrollment is limited to 12.
The theme for 284 this time will be “Medicine in the Heroic Age.” During the early part of the 20th century, the idea that doctors were the conquerors of disease and heroes of science became very widespread. We will devote the semester to examining medicine and the other healing professions were transformed during this historical period, and in what ways they remained the same. Requirements: Students will attend scheduled discussions and movie screenings or find times to watch required movies on their own. At the beginning of the semester, students will produce a short (2-3 page) essay describing their understanding of medicine as a career and what they would expect to do as a physician. Later on, each student will conduct a short research project on the overall theme of the course and write a short (5-page) paper describing their findings. PLEASE NOTE: Although the timetable says this course will meet in 204 Bradley Memorial, we will be meeting in Ebling Library down at the Health Sciences Learning Center. This will allow us to have access to the Medical Library’s holdings. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
1 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary); Prerequisites: Con reg for honors in Hist Sci/Hist Med 212 or cons inst. 4:00-5:00 R Prerequisites: Open to Freshmen. For honors credit con reg in Hist Sci/Hist Med 284 or cons instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 353: Instructor: Helen Tilley |
|
| This course explores the multifaceted histories of ecology, focusing especially on developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Students will learn about the ways in which an array of different disciplines – from natural history, botany, zoology, forestry, and geography to epidemiology, racial science, and anthropology – approached the study of organisms in relation to their environments. We will also consider how ecological questions and research methods were influenced by the rise of the nation-state, the growth of transnational trade, the construction of empires, the proliferation of industries and urban centers, and the Cold War. While intellectual histories of ecology usually focus on classic texts produced in Europe and North America, this course will also consider multiple sites around the world in which large and small-scale ecological studies were undertaken. | Crosslisted with History of Science and Environmental Studies
T/TH 9:30AM-10:45AM |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructor: Dayle Delancey |
|
| This course surveys the history of public health in the United States from the colonial period to the late twentieth century, emphasizing many issues in the development of public responsibility for health that are relevant at the beginning of the 21st century, including responses to epidemic diseases. The course is run as a seminar/discussion, and part of the student requirements include regular and constructive class participation. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate); Tu/Th 1:00PM – 2:15PM Prerequisites: Junior or Consent of Instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 523: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| The problem of the 20th century, wrote W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), “is the problem of the color-line.” This course considers the issue of the color line in American medicine over the past two centuries. We will be looking at the ways in which skin color (and other elements of “racial identity”) have influenced the experiences of patients, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers, seeking to document and analyze how conceptions of race have shaped the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past two hundred years. Topics include the origins of racial classification, the health and medical care of slaves, the use of minorities as research subjects, especially the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the history of racial disparities in medicine, and the efforts to integrate the American medical profession. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Afro-American Studies
3 cr.; S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tu/Th 11:00AM – 12:15PM Prerequisites: Junior or Senior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructors: Norman Fost and Robert Streiffer |
|
| Ethical issues apparently created by new biomedical technologies, such as genetic screening, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, in vitro fertilization, behavior modification, psychosurgery, and transplantation. | Crosslisted with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tu 11:00AM – 12:15PM Prerequisites: Junior standing; Includes graduate and professional careers |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-001: Instructor: Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course focuses on ethical issues implicated in population-level approaches to disease prevention and health promotion. Students will explore theoretical approaches to public health ethics and will engage with several ethical tensions. Issues to be discussed can include: the use of coercive or intrusive public health interventions that restrict individual freedom, infringe upon individual privacy, and/or invite individual harm (or risks of harm); the justification of paternalistic measures in societies or sub-populations that seemingly indulge in pleasurable yet unhealthy behaviors; the extent to which societies should hold individuals responsible for their health conditions; priority-setting and the allocation of scarce resources; ethical issues in the use of cost-benefit analysis for public health policy evaluation; whether to treat already sick individuals or to prevent more death and suffering that would occur in the future; how to balance between maximizing aggregate health benefits and addressing the special needs of vulnerable social sub-groups and individuals; climate change and intergenerational justice; and ethical issues in international pharmaceutical research. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tu/Th 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Cons inst; enrollment may be limited depending on topic and approach |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-002: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| The global expansion of infectious diseases and increasing health disparities between industrialized and developing countries have been among the major concerns in international health circles for at least two decades. Yet an increasing awareness of the links between these problems and the global environment has emerged among public health professionals and caregivers only in the past few years. This course aims at expanding awareness of the intersections of major international health problems and a crisis of the global environment by outlining both contemporary and historical dimensions of this juncture to beginning undergraduates through a truly interdisciplinary exposition. The course will integrate faculty experts from a range of departments to present a survey of the principal biological, geographical, social, and cultural aspects of health and the global environment. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) Tu/Th 1:00PM – 2:15PM |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 562: Instructor: John Scarborough |
|
| Byzantine and Islamic medicine and drug lore from Oribasius to the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance (c. 350-c. 1400 A.D.). | Crosslisted with S&A Pharmacy, History, History of Science, and Medieval
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Time: TuTh 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Jr or Sr status or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 610: Instructor: Linda F. Hogle |
|
| This course is designed to introduce graduate science, engineering, and medical students working in regenerative medicine research to the key ethical, policy and social issues relevant to the field. Primary scientific and policy documents will be used as resources as well as analyses of current social and political environments.
Topics include (among others): The background of legal disputes over embryonic stem cell research; Understanding the relations among governments, the public & the media in the face of controversial research; Guidelines and oversight rules: what stem cell researchers need to know; Clinical trials & First-in-human research; Translational issues: data sharing & intellectual property NOTE: THIS COURSE IS TAUGHT AS A CONCENTRATED, SHORT COURSE (7 sessions). Counts for ethics credit for a number of graduate science programs (check first with your advisor). (Course Flyer) |
Not cross-listed
1 credit Fr 8:00AM – 10:00AM Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional status and permission of instructor. Meets ethics requirements for CMB. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-001: Instructor: Helen Tilley |
|
| 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. Since no approach was monolithic or static, a central aim of the course will be to understand how developments like imperialism, market economies, migration, and epidemiological and demographic change have affected health conditions and responses in the continent. We will pay considerable attention in this course to “hybrid” situations during the colonial and post-colonial periods in which multiple approaches to health care were pursued simultaneously. This should help put more recent experiences with HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases (sleeping sickness, tuberculosis, malaria), and also with magic and medicine in a deeper historical context. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) Tu/Th 2:30PM-3:45PM Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 728: Instructor: Linda F. Hogle |
|
| The aims of this course are to provide understandings of the broader social, cultural and political contexts in which debates around medical science and practice occur, and to explore the use of qualitative and interdisciplinary methods to conduct research in these areas. Readings will draw upon perspectives from the medical social sciences & science and technology studies to analyze dilemmas in medicine as well as to critically examine the field of bioethics. The course will cover topics in biomedical science and technology as well as clinical and public health, and may emphasize one or the other depending on the interests of enrolled students. It is designed for the needs of graduate students in the social sciences and humanities, population health sciences, health policy, law, medicine, and health professions. Basic knowledge of social theory is recommended.
Topics may include: clinical trials (especially international trials and first-in-human research), biosecurity, concepts of risk (esp. pandemics & disasters), neuroscience and society, and biological citizenship, among others. (Course Flyer) |
Not cross-listed
3 cr.; B (Biological Science) 9:00-11:30 T Prerequisites: Graduate or Professional Status and consent of Instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 915: Instructor: Ronald Numbers |
|
| This course will be devoted to the History of Science, Medicine and Religion. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced)(Arts and Humanities) M 10:00AM-12:00PM Prerequisites: Graduate status and consent of the instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Judy Houck |
|
| They started free clinics. They took back the night. They lobbied Congress. They showed each other their cervixes. They practiced medicine without a license. They delivered babies. They insisted they weren’t sick. They insisted they were. They shouted, they marched, they shopped, they struck, they sat.
Health activists, working both inside healthcare professions and outside them, have profoundly shaped medical institutions, workplace environments, research agendas, disease boundaries, treatment options, and medical accessibility. This course examines the history of health activism in the United States, paying particular attention to the place of race, gender, and sexuality in health movements. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced)(Biological Sciences) W 2:30-5:00PM Prerequisites: Graduate status and consent of the instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
Fall 2011
|
Medical History and Bioethics 504: Instructor: Ronald Numbers |
|
| Health care in America since the colonial period; emphasis on social developments. Although the focus will be on the past, efforts will be made to relate the past to the present. Class discussion and intensive writing required. | Crosslisted with History and History of Science.
3 credits. Biological Science. Counts toward the Natural Science requirement. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. 11:00 – 12:15 MW Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 513: Instructor: Helen Tilley |
|
| What explains the distribution of different diseases around the world and how have these patterns changed over time? In what ways have the growth of cities, new industries, extractive economies, mass migrations, and “global colonialism” shaped human health? Why are most societies having to confront newly emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases? Is it fair to claim that we are now facing health and environmental emergencies on a planetary scale? If so, who or what is being hardest hit and can these patterns be reversed? To what extent are national and international health policies influenced by the coexistence of multiple medical traditions around the world?
This course begins to answer these questions by exploring the dynamic interplay among local and global environments and human and non-human health over the last five hundred years. We will consider both the history of ideas about environment and disease as well as the ways in which changing environments have affected well-being. In addition, we will examine how places – as sites of study, experimentation, and intervention – have mattered to the production of knowledge and the control of disease. We will also investigate various social, economic, and political phenomena that have impinged upon and influenced health and healing on regional and global levels. |
Crosslisted with Environmental Studies and History of Science.
3 credits. Either Humanities or Social Science. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Advanced. 9:30 – 10:45 T/TH Prerequisites: Junior status. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 526: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| There is a long history of bodily modification throughout time and across societies. Modifications can be for functional restoration, augmentation, enhancement, or aesthetic purposes and may involve chemical, mechanical, interactive or implantable technologies. This course explores the ways that bodily modifications and the development of body-altering technologies co-evolve with social and technical understandings of appearance, function and perception. We begin with a critical examination of concepts of the ‘normal’ body, followed by cultural understandings of ability, appearance, function and enhancement. Topics will include bionics, organ and tissue substitution, assistive technologies, neural prosthetics, cognitive enhancements, augmented reality/ ambient computing and sensing, among others. The course is of interest to students in pre-professional medical fields, biomedical engineers, social sciences, disability studies. | Not cross-listed
3 credits; Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. 4:00pm-6:40pm Mondays Prerequisites: Sophomore status or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 531: Instructor: Judith Houck |
|
| Women’s relationship to medical institutions, constructions of disease, and their own bodies differs from that of men. This course examines historically the health issues women have faced and how those issues have differed according to race and class. In particular, it explores the personal experiences and the medical views of womens life-cycle events, the role of women as health care providers and activists, and the effect of gender on the perception and meaning of illness. | Crosslisted with Gender/Women’s Studies and History of Science.
3 credits; Biological Science. Counts toward the Natural Science required. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. 9:30-10:45pm T/TH Prerequisites: Junior status and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 543: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| This course examines the relationship between insanity and its social and historical contexts between the 18th-century birth of the asylum and contemporary debates about depression and psychopharmacology. Major themes include the shifting meanings of madness for social categories like class, race, and gender. While the principal focus will be the place of madness and psychiatry in Western medicine, comparisons with Africa and Asia will also play a role in the course. We will examine the history of madness through a close reading of medical, sociological, philosophical, and popular literature. Focused readings of these texts will help reveal changes in social, medical, and aesthetic views on psychopathology in the modern period, providing a basis for understanding the place of madness in the contemporary world.
Graduate students registered in 543 must register concurrently in MHB 743. |
Crosslisted with History of Science and with History.
3 credits; Either Humanities or Social Science Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. 11:00-12:15pm T/TH Prerequisites: Junior status or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the ethical issues central to clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants who master this course material will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation. | Not cross-listed
1 credit; Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Advanced. 3:30-5:30 W Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 553: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| Intense concern over the burgeoning of emerging infectious diseases–along with the renewed vigor of known epidemics–has heightened medical, media, and popular attention to the international dimensions of health in a globalizing society. Yet historians have long recognized the “microbial unification of the world” as a phenomenon that dates at least to the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of historical and anthropological materials and methods, this course explores the history of public health and medicine as international phenomena, concentrating chiefly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Specific topics include the connections between global pandemics such as cholera and plague to European colonial expansion; the rise of international aid organizations; historical and contemporary anxieties about global migration and the spread of disease; and the international dimensions of a global medical marketplace. Particular themes include the connection between culture and medical ideas and practices; and the tensions of practicing medicine in multi-cultural settings.
Graduate students registered in 553 must register concurrently in MHB 753. |
Crosslisted with History of Science and with Population Health.
3 credits; Either Humanities or Social Science. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. 2:30-3:45 T/TH Prerequisites: Junior or Senior status, or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-001: Instructor: Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course will examine ethical issues in the distribution, financing, and delivery of health care in the United States. We will focus in particular on central issues raised by the recent U.S. health care reform debate and resulting legislation. Readings will be drawn from political philosophy, health care economics, behavioral economics, nonprofit thinktank white papers, Congressional testimony, news articles, and blog posts. The first half of the class will consist of units exploring the philosophical and economic bases underlying currently dominant perspectives on putative entitlements to health care. We will seek to understand health economists’ concern to promote the “efficiency” of health resource allocation while constraining the “moral hazard” they detect when individuals use “too much” health care. In this context we will strive to identify values that may either compete with or override concerns with efficiency, so construed. The second half of the class will consist of units investigating the nature, justifiability, and methods of health care rationing—including bedside rationing by doctors—and the myriad issues implicated by the near-universally shared goal of health care cost containment. If time allows, we will further examine one of the following two questions: (1) Are there ethically defensible alternatives to the current patent regime for pharmaceutical development that could reduce drug costs while offering adequate or even enhanced levels of innovation?; (2) What, if anything, does a just government owe immigrants (legal and illegal) when it comes to health care? | Not cross-listed
3 credits; Humanities. Counts for up to 20 degree credits in L&S. Intermediate or Advanced. 11:00-12:15 T/TH Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 561: Instructor: John Scarborough |
|
| Greek and Roman medicine and drug lore from the Pre-Socratics to Oribasius (c. 600 B.C. – A.D. 350), including the backgrounds of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian medicine. | Crosslisted with Classics, History of Science, History, and S&A PHM.
3 credits; Humanities, Intermediate, Advanced. TuTh 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Jr or Sr st, or cons inst. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Robert Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology to microorganisms, crops, and non-human animals. Readings cover moral theory, technology studies, political philosophy, the science used in biotechnology, and current regulations governing its use. | Crosslisted with Agronomy, Philosophy, and Community and Environmental Sociology.
3 credits; Humanities. Counts for Liberal Arts and Science credit in L&S. Intermediate. 2:25-4:55pm Thursdays Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers. Excludes university specials and guests. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 713: Instructor: Helen Tilley |
|
| What explains the distribution of different diseases around the world and how have these patterns changed over time? In what ways have the growth of cities, new industries, extractive economies, mass migrations, and “global colonialism” shaped human health? Why are most societies having to confront newly emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases? Is it fair to claim that we are now facing health and environmental emergencies on a planetary scale? If so, who or what is being hardest hit and can these patterns be reversed? To what extent are national and international health policies influenced by the coexistence of multiple medical traditions around the world?
This course begins to answer these questions by exploring the dynamic interplay among local and global environments and human and non-human health over the last five hundred years. We will consider both the history of ideas about environment and disease as well as the ways in which changing environments have affected well-being. In addition, we will examine how places – as sites of study, experimentation, and intervention – have mattered to the production of knowledge and the control of disease. We will also investigate various social, economic, and political phenomena that have impinged upon and influenced health and healing on regional and global levels. |
Crosslisted with Environmental Studies and History of Science.
1 credit. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status and concurrent registration in Med Hist 513. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 726: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| There is a long history of bodily modification throughout time and across societies. Modifications can be for functional restoration, augmentation, enhancement, or aesthetic purposes and may involve chemical, mechanical, interactive or implantable technologies. This course explores the ways that bodily modifications and the development of body-altering technologies co-evolve with social and technical understandings of appearance, function and perception. We begin with a critical examination of concepts of the ‘normal’ body, followed by cultural understandings of ability, appearance, function and enhancement. Topics will include bionics, organ and tissue substitution, assistive technologies, neural prosthetics, cognitive enhancements, augmented reality/ ambient computing and sensing, among others. The course is of interest to students in pre-professional medical fields, biomedical engineers, social sciences, disability studies. | Not cross-listed
1 credit. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status and concurrent registration in Med Hist 526 or consent of Instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 728: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| The aims of this course are to provide understandings of the broader social, cultural and political contexts in which debates around medical science and practice occur, and to examine the use of qualitative and interdisciplinary methods to conduct research in these areas. Readings and discussion will draw upon perspectives from social science, bioethics and science policy research and will include ethnography, historical analysis, life history & patient narrative analysis, and cultural theory. The course will cover issues in both clinical and public health settings, and may emphasize one or the other depending on the interests of enrolled students. It is designed for the needs of graduate students in the social sciences and humanities, population health sciences, health policy, law, medicine, and health professions.
Topics include the ethics of clinical trials (domestic and international, ethics of first-in-human research), biosecurity (pandemics, vaccines, disasters), death and disorders of consciousness, dilemmas posed by technology (the politics of diagnosis and treatments, new subjectivities in interaction with devices) among others. |
Not cross-listed
1-3 credits. 9:00-11:40 Fridays Prerequisites Graduate status. One of the following: Anthro 365, Soc 531, Pop Hlth 780 or equivs, or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 743: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| See MHB 543. Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature of the history of psychiatry, with emphasis on historiographical issues. | Crosslisted with History of Science.
1 credit. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status & concurrent registration in Medical History 543, or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 753: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| See MHB 553. Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Population Health.
1 credit. Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Graduate status & concurrent registration in Medical History 553, or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Susan Lederer |
|
| This graduate seminar focuses on the recent and renewed interest in food, its production, distribution, marketing and consumption. From farm to fork, from meat to mung bean, paleoagriculture to genetically modified foods, the foods people have eaten and continue to eat reflect assumptions about culture, morality, nutrition, science and health. From the vantage point of medical history and history of science, this seminar considers the development of ideas about food safety, the creation of nutritional guidelines, and the myriad ways that science and medicine have influenced food consumption and dietary regulation. (course flyer) | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 credits.; A (Advanced) 1:20-3:15 Tuesdays Prerequisites: Graduate status and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Robert Streiffer |
|
| The purpose of this course is to help graduate students, especially those within the life sciences, to understand the policies regulating research and the ethical principles on which these policies are based. Topics vary but will typically include an introduction to ethical reasoning, the research mission of land grant universities, professional codes of conduct, research misconduct, humans subjects research, ethical issues in design and statistics, mentoring, intellectual property, authorship, and peer review. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; A (Advanced) 9:30 – 10:45 Wednesdays Prerequisites: Graduate students who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
Summer 2011
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559: Instructor: Paul Kelleher |
|
| When is an inequality in health status an inequity or injustice? What is the value of equality? Should equality be construed more as a desirable feature of distributions (e.g. of income or health statuses) or as a virtue of social relations (as in a “society of equals”)? Does the specific cause of an inequality affect its moral urgency? Might the goal of health equity ever conflict with the goal of making everyone healthier? The first week of this 3-week intercession course will survey several ethical approaches to understanding the nature, value, and importance of equality. The second week brings ethical analysis to bear on recent work in social epidemiology and health economics on the social determinants of population health. The third week will focus on international health inequalities and will ask whether and why citizens in rich countries have urgent duties to aid those who suffer ill health in developing countries. | Not cross-listed
3 credits. 9:00am – 12:00pm M, T, W, TH, F Prerequisites: Graduate students and Professional track. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
Spring 2011
|
Medical History and Bioethics 212: Instructor: Shannon Withycombe |
|
| This course presents an introductory survey of the history of medicine from Antiquity to the 20th Century, and is aimed primarily at students interested in careers in the health professions. It explains how the understanding of health and illness has evolved in Western culture, showing why particular ideas of illness came into dominance at different moments in history. Most importantly, by providing the “long perspective” on the history of medicine, the course attempts to challenge some widely held assumptions about how the advancement of science has contributed to modern medicine. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; H (Humanities), E (Elementary) MoWe 2:25PM – 3:15PM Prerequisites: Open to Fr. For honors credit con reg in Hist Sci/Hist Med 284 or cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 331: Instructor: Ronald L. Numbers |
|
| Science and religion are often thought of as totally distinct enterprises, existing in separate worlds. Yet many tales of conflict between science and religion (including medicine and religion) continue to circulate. How is this possible? Is it that religion and/or science have forgotten their proper roles and have illegitimately invaded each other’s territory? Or is the notion that science and religion inhabit separate worlds based on a misunderstanding of the nature of science and the nature of religion? This course explores such questions through a survey of science and religion interactions in the Western (including Christian, Jewish, and Islamic) traditions. | Crosslisted with History of Science and Religious Studies
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) MoWe 11:00AM – 12:15PM Prerequisites: Jr st and cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructors: Susan Lederer and Dayle Delancey |
|
| This course surveys the history of public health in the United States from the colonial period to the late twentieth century, emphasizing many issues in the development of public responsibility for health that are relevant at the beginning of the 21st century, including responses to epidemic diseases. The course is run as a seminar/discussion, and part of the student requirements include regular and constructive class participation. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate); TuTh 1:00PM – 2:15PM Prerequisites: Junior or Senior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 523: Instructor: Susan M. Lederer |
|
| The problem of the 20th century, wrote W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), “is the problem of the color-line.” This course considers the issue of the color line in American medicine over the past two centuries. We will be looking at the ways in which skin color (and other elements of “racial identity”) have influenced the experiences of patients, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers, seeking to document and analyze how conceptions of race have shaped the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past two hundred years. Topics include the origins of racial classification, the health and medical care of slaves, the use of minorities as research subjects, especially the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the history of racial disparities in medicine, and the efforts to integrate the American medical profession. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Afro-American Studies
3 cr.; S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced) TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM Prerequisites: Junior or Senior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructor: Norman C. Fost |
|
| Ethical issues apparently created by new biomedical technologies, such as genetic screening, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, in vitro fertilization, behavior modification, psychosurgery, and transplantation. | Crosslisted with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Tu 11:00AM – 12:15PM Prerequisites: Junior standing; Includes graduate and professional careers |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-001: Instructor: Linda F. Hogle |
|
| This course is designed to introduce upper-level undergraduate students to ethical, policy and social issues related to regenerative medicine. We will focus on stem cell research and related areas of regenerative medicine, and nanobiomedicine. The course is interdisciplinary: we will use material from history, social science, ethics, humanities, communications/media as well as public policy. | Not cross-listed
Humanities; Intermediate or Advanced Time: Mo 4:00PM – 7:00PM Prerequisites: Must have Junior standing or Higher. Includes graduate and professional careers |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-002: Instructor: Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course focuses on ethical issues distinctive of a population-level approach to disease prevention and health promotion. Students will explore prominent theoretical approaches to public health ethics and will engage with several ethical tensions. Special topics for the Spring 2011 semester include climate change and the social determinants of health. Other issues we will discuss include: the use of coercive or intrusive public health interventions that restrict individual freedom, infringe upon individual privacy, and/or invite individual harm (or risks of harm); the justification of paternalistic measures in societies or sub-populations that seemingly indulge in pleasurable yet unhealthy behaviors; the extent to which societies should hold individuals responsible for their health conditions; the need to decide who receives life-saving treatment or vaccination when not all can; the need to choose between the identifiable victims we can save with expensive measures here and now and the more numerous unidentifiable victims we could save in the future with the same monetary investment; the trade-offs between maximizing aggregate health benefits and addressing the special needs of vulnerable social sub-groups and individuals; and the need to establish reasonable limits to public health demands in a world where health outcomes are profoundly influenced by policies in other domains (such as transportation, housing, unemployment, and education) that generate their own ethical problems and imperatives. | Meets with Phil 305-001
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM Prerequisites: Cons inst; enrollment may be limited depending on topic and approach |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-003: Instructor: Robert K. Streiffer |
|
| This is a course for upper-level undergraduates. Much of the environmental ethics literature focuses on the related questions of whether nature has intrinsic value and whether humans have direct moral obligations to non-human entities, including plants, animals, species, ecosystems, and the biosphere as a whole. Indeed, some have argued that for an ethic to truly be an environmental ethic just is for it to answer those questions in the affirmative. But a growing number of philosophers are arguing that an anthropocentric (human-centered) ethic can justify environmental protections substantially equivalent to those justified by non-anthropocentric theories. This course focuses on anthropocentric environmental ethics approaches that address the connections between human health, both individual and public, and the natural environment. We will study representative examples and defenses of these perspectives, consider the extent to which they overlap and converge on a practical agenda, and explore several related areas of applied ethics, including: environmental justice, global climate change, intergenerational justice, and population ethics. | Meets with Phil 543-001
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) TuTh 1:00PM – 2:15PM Prerequisites: Cons inst; enrollment may be limited depending on topic and approach |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 562: Instructor: John Scarborough |
|
| Byzantine and Islamic medicine and drug lore from Oribasius to the beginnings of the Italian Renaissance (c. 350-c. 1400 A.D.). | Crosslisted with S&A Pharmacy, History, History of Science, and Medieval
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Time: TuTh 2:30PM – 3:45PM Prerequisites: Jr or Sr st or cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 610: Instructors: Regenerative Medicine Ethics and Society |
|
| This course is designed to introduce graduate students to ethical, policy and social issues related to regenerative medicine, specifically stem cell research. It is designed primarily for the needs of students in medicine, law, public policy and science & engineering fields who work in stem cell or related areas of research. Primary scientific and policy documents will be used as resources as well as analyses of current social and political environments. Other students and faculty are welcome but should first consult the instructor. NOTE: THIS COURSE IS TAUGHT AS A CONCENTRATED, SHORT COURSE (7 sessions). | Not cross-listed
Fr 9:00AM – 12:00PM Prerequisites: Grad st and permission of instructor (3 credit). Grad st (1 credit) |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-001: Instructor: Walton Schalick |
|
| Disability is a word which surrounds us. From debates about end-of-life issues to Social Security from test-taking ‘allowances’ to Not-Dead-Yet, from Medicaid cutbacks to Terry Schiavo, disability is in the media, on our lips and in our ears. What is disability? How has disability changed over time and in different cultures? Where does such an idea come from? What social, cultural, and political assumptions is it based upon? Examining a wide range of historical arguments about the nature and purpose of disability, from pre-history to Plato, to medieval theologians, to more contemporary works, we will approach the history of disability in Western thought and social practice in terms of its relation to arguments about the role of human development and the formulation of personhood, citizenship, and social well being. The readings will include a thick mixture of primary sources in translation and secondary sources, both classic and newly published. We will encounter a variety of techniques and tools used by historians and other scholars as we course through the sessions. The emphasis of our discussions will be the characteristics of disability in a variety of centuries and cultures as well as lacunae in our understanding and debates in the literature. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) MW 2:30pm – 3:45pm Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-002: Instructor: Dayle DeLancey |
|
| From imaging devices to pharmaceuticals, medical technologies are often among the most novel and controversial aspects of contemporary society. Yet, U.S. history reveals that neither the emergence of high profile medical technologies nor the dilemmas that often accompany their arrival are strictly ‘modern day’ phenomena. History also demonstrates that such technologies tend to reflect not only the medical science, but also the social concerns, of the periods in which they have emerged. In this course, we will explore the ways in which a range of technologies – e.g. stethoscopes, spirometers, sphygmomanometers, hospital design, x-rays, reproductive technologies, gene therapy, virtual medicine, etc. – have at once shaped medicine and invited critique. Using readings from a range of sources illuminating key medical technologies in the 18th to 21st century U.S., we will analyze these technologies in historical, social, and theoretical context. Questions guiding our work will include: What are the historical roots of significant medical technologies? How did these technologies shape medicine? Why have physicians and the pubic embraced some medical technologies and not others? What non-medical technologies have influenced the development of medical technologies? How has the historiography of medical technology shaped the histories of medicine and science as academic disciplines? Has medical technology ever been ‘value free’? | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) 11:00-12:15 TR Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-004: Instructor: Helen Tilley |
|
| 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. Since no approach was monolithic or static, a central aim of the course will be to understand how developments like imperialism, market economies, migration, and epidemiological and demographic change have affected health conditions and responses in the continent. We will pay considerable attention in this course to “hybrid” situations during the colonial and post-colonial periods in which multiple approaches to health care were pursued simultaneously. This should help put more recent experiences with HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases (sleeping sickness, tuberculosis, malaria), and also with magic and medicine in a deeper historical context. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) 9:30-10:45 TR Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-005: Instructors: Richard Keller and Helen Tilley |
|
| The global expansion of infectious diseases and increasing health disparities between industrialized and developing countries have been among the major concerns in international health circles for at least two decades. Yet an increasing awareness of the links between these problems and the global environment has emerged among public health professionals and caregivers only in the past few years. This course aims at expanding awareness of the intersections of major international health problems and a crisis of the global environment by outlining both contemporary and historical dimensions of this juncture to beginning undergraduates through a truly interdisciplinary exposition. Led by Professors Richard Keller and Helen Tilley in the Department of Medical History and Bioethics, the course will integrate faculty experts from a range of departments to present a survey of the principal biological, geographical, social, and cultural aspects of health and the global environment. | Crosslisted with History of Science, meets with ENV St 200
3 cr.; A (Advanced) 1:00-2:15 TR Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| Seminar-discussions. Problems: abortion, prenatal diagnosis, genetic screening, euthanasia, definition of death, experimentation, and patients’ rights. Open to all 4th yr Med students (8 or 16 wks) as an elective. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, advanced Time/Room TBA; 6 week course Prerequisites: Med Students, or by consent of instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 890: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr. A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prereq: Open to all 4th yr Med stdts (8 or 16 wks) & Grad stdts of all other depts (16 wks) |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
Fall 2010
|
Medical History and Bioethics 504: Instructor: Ronald Numbers |
|
| Health care in America since the colonial period; emphasis on social developments. Although the focus will be on the past, efforts will be made to relate the past to the present. Class discussion and intensive writing required | Crosslisted with History and History of Science
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate) 11:00 – 12:15 MW Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 543: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| The course examines insanity and its treatment in social, historical and medical contexts between the origins of the asylum and contemporary psychopharmacology. Major themes include the ways in which social phenomena such as race, class, and gender have informed psychiatric theory and practice; the development of psychotherapeutic and biomedical strains in modern psychiatry; and the history of the clinical encounter in diverse psychiatric settings: the asylum, the consultation, and the outpatient clinic. Careful reading and discussion of medical and popular literature on psychopathology guide examinations of psychiatry in modern European and global settings. Graduate students registered in 543 must register concurrently in MHB 743. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with History
3 cr., Z (Humanities or Social Science), I (Intermediate) 9:30-10:45 TR Prerequisites: Jr st or cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the ethical issues central to clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants who master this course material will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; C (Counts for LAS credit, L&S), A (Advanced) 3:30-5:30 W |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 553: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| Major problems in international health from 1750 to the present. Focus on disease epidemiology and ecology; political economy of health; migration; quarantine; race, ethnicity, and health care; international health research; cross-cultural healing; mental and maternal health; growth of international health organizations. Graduate students registered in 553 must register concurrently in MHB 753. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Population Health
3 cr., Z (Humanities or Social Science), I (Intermediate) 2:30-3:45 TR Prerequisites: Jr or Sr st, or cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-001: Instructor: Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course will examine ethical issues in the distribution, financing, and delivery of health care in the United States. We will focus in particular on central issues raised by the recent U.S. health care reform debate and resulting legislation. Readings will be drawn from political philosophy, health care economics, behavioral economics, nonprofit thinktank reports, Congressional testimony, news articles, and blog posts. The first half of the class will consist of units exploring the philosophical and economic bases underlying currently dominant perspectives on putative entitlements to health care. We will seek to understand health economists’ concern to promote the “efficiency” of health resource allocation while constraining the “moral hazard” they detect when individuals use “too much” health care. In this context we will strive to identify values that may either compete with or override concerns with efficiency, so construed. The second half of the class will consist of units investigating the nature, justifiability, and methods of health care rationing—including bedside rationing by doctors—and the myriad issues implicated by the near-universally shared goal of health care cost containment. If time allows, we will consider a question rarely (if ever) asked during the recent health care reform debate: Are there ethically defensible alternatives to the current patent regime for pharmaceutical development that could reduce drug costs while offering adequate or even enhanced levels of innovation? | Not crosslisted
3 cr., H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) 11:00-12:15 TR Prerequisites: Cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 669: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 743: Instructor: Richard Keller1 cr.; |
|
| See MHB 543. Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature of the history of psychiatry, with emphasis on historiographical issues. | Not cross-listed
Graduate, Basic Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Med Hist 543, or cons inst. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 753: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| See MHB 553. Advanced readings that examine major problems in modern international health. Focus on epidemiology and disease ecology; political economy of health; migration; quarantine; international health research; cross-cultural healing; mental and maternal health; growth of international health organizations. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, Basic Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Med Hist 553 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 890: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr. A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prereq: Open to all 4th yr Med stdts (8 or 16 wks) & Grad stdts of all other depts (16 wks) |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Walton Schalick |
|
| The history of disability is a young and dynamic field. This seminar will address that history and its historiography as well as the lacunae resulting there from. Our readings will range from Antiquity to the twentieth century, from Africa to America, from medical to sociopolitical history. The majority of the material will relate to modern Europe and the U.S. Our seminar will appeal to historians, literary scholars and social scientists interested in disability, the body, medicine and contractarian politics. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time TBA Prereq: Grad st and cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prereq: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
Spring 2010
|
Medical History and Bioethics 431: Instructor: Judith Leavitt |
|
| American women’s childbirth experiences from the colonial period to the present. Childbirth as a cultural as well as a biological event. Basic physiological information for understanding and evaluating changing approaches to pregnancy and childbirth. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Gender and Women’s Studies
3 cr.; S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced) 1:00-2:15 TR Prerequisites: Women St 103 or 430 or equiv; or cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 523: Instructor: Susan Lederer |
|
| The problem of the 20th century, wrote W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk (1903), “is the problem of the color-line.” This course considers the issue of the color line in American medicine over the past two centuries. We will be looking at the ways in which skin color (and other elements of “racial identity”) have influenced the experiences of patients, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers, seeking to document and analyze how conceptions of race have shaped the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past two hundred years. Topics include the origins of racial classification, the health and medical care of slaves, the use of minorities as research subjects, especially the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the history of racial disparities in medicine, and the efforts to integrate the American medical profession. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Afro-American Studies
3 cr.; S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced) 2:30-3:45 MW Prerequisites: Junior or Senior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 532: Instructor: Judith A. Houck |
|
| This course demonstrates that human bodies have social and cultural histories. It will highlight the social values placed on different bodies, the changing social expectations bodies create, and the role of science and medicine in creating the cultural meanings of bodies. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Gender and Women’s Studies
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced) 11:00-12:15 TR Prerequisites: GWS 103 or other GWS course; prev hist (incl med hist & hist sci) crse preferred |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 553: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| Major problems in international health from 1750 to the present. Focus on disease epidemiology and ecology; political economy of health; migration; quarantine; race, ethnicity, and health care; international health research; cross-cultural healing; mental and maternal health; growth of international health organizations. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Population Health
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Sci), I (Intermediate) 2:30-3:45 TR Prerequisites: Jr or Sr st, or cons inst. Graduate students must register concurrently in MHB 753 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructors: N. Fost and R. Streiffer |
|
| Ethical issues created by new biomedical technologies, such as genetic screening, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, /I/in vitro /M/fertilization, behavior modification, psychosurgery, and transplantation. | Crosslisted with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Lecture T 11:00-12:15; Discussions R 9:30-10:45, 11:00-12:15, or 2:30-3:45 Prerequisites: Junior standing; Includes graduate and professional careers |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-001: Instructor: Diane Paul |
|
| This course explores historical and contemporary intersections of genetics and society. We begin with a pair of philosophical concepts — natural order and human dignity — that are widely invoked in contemporary debates over genetic manipulation of humans and other organisms. We ask why it is so often thought crucial that our beliefs and practices accord with “nature” (including “human nature”) and also why some philosophers have rejected this perspective. We then examine both pre-World War II efforts to improve the human genome and contemporary practices of genetic testing, including prenatal and preimplantation genetic diagnosis, carrier testing, predictive testing for late-onset conditions, newborn screening, and the use of genetic tests to determine ancestry. We end by exploring the development of new forms of association and advocacy based on shared genetic risk. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) 9:30-10:45 TR Prerequisites: Cons inst; enrollment may be limited depending on topic and approach |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-002: Instructor: Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course focuses on ethical issues distinctive of a population-level approach to disease prevention and health promotion, especially as they bear on the activities of governmental health agencies. Students will explore prominent theoretical approaches to public health ethics and will engage with several ethical tensions, including: the trade-offs between maximizing aggregate health benefits and addressing the special needs of vulnerable social sub-groups and individuals; the use of coercive or intrusive public health interventions that restrict individual freedom, infringe upon individual privacy, and/or invite individual harm (or risks of harm); the justification of paternalistic measures in societies or sub-populations that seemingly indulge in pleasurable yet unhealthy behaviors; the extent to which societies should hold individuals responsible for their health conditions; the need to decide who receives life-saving treatment or vaccination when not all can; the need to choose between the identifiable victims we can save with expensive measures here and now and the more numerous unidentifiable victims we could save in the future with the same monetary investment; and the need to establish reasonable limits to public health demands in a world where health outcomes are profoundly influenced by policies in other domains (such as transportation, housing, unemployment, and education) that generate their own ethical problems and imperatives. | Meets with Phil 305-001
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) 9:30-10:45 TR Prerequisites: Cons inst; enrollment may be limited depending on topic and approach |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-003: Instructor: Paul Kelleher |
|
| This course will focus on the question: What do we owe each other healthwise? Ever since John Rawls ducked this question in his influential work, A Theory of Justice, many others have offered philosophical frameworks that address it head on. With a primary focus on the domestic context, we will investigate the bases on which various frameworks found political duties to address health needs. Special attention will be paid both to the ways in which the demandingness of candidate duties shapes the content and scope of bona fide social obligations, and to the special features of the domestic political context that might generate health-related responsibilities of citizenship. We will also ask how a just society will respond to the presence of disability in the populace; this will force us to address the fact that many forms of disability appear to be the result of an interplay between biomedical impairment and the wider built and social environment. When disabilities can be eliminated or alleviated through social accommodation and environmental change, how should the burdens of accommodation be distributed? Are there some disabilities that ought always to be addressed via social accommodation, even if more individualized measures (surgery or special wheelchairs, e.g.) are less expensive or less socially disruptive? Finally, we will take up the question of justice for persons with cognitive disabilities, which is still largely neglected by philosophers concerned with justice in health and health care. | Meets with Phil 305-002
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) 4:00-5:15 TR Prerequisites: Cons inst; enrollment may be limited depending on topic and approach |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Robert Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology to microorganisms, crops, and non-human animals. Readings cover moral theory, technology studies, political philosophy, the science used in biotechnology, and current regulations governing its use. | Crosslisted with Agronomy, Rural Sociology, and Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Time 2:25-4:55 M Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-001: Instructor: Walton Schalick |
|
| Disability is a word which surrounds us. From debates about end-of-life issues to Social Security from test-taking ‘allowances’ to Not-Dead-Yet, from Medicaid cutbacks to Terry Schiavo, disability is in the media, on our lips and in our ears. What is disability? How has disability changed over time and in different cultures? Where does such an idea come from? What social, cultural, and political assumptions is it based upon? Examining a wide range of historical arguments about the nature and purpose of disability, from pre-history to Plato, to medieval theologians, to more contemporary works, we will approach the history of disability in Western thought and social practice in terms of its relation to arguments about the role of human development and the formulation of personhood, citizenship, and social well being. The readings will include a thick mixture of primary sources in translation and secondary sources, both classic and newly published. We will encounter a variety of techniques and tools used by historians and other scholars as we course through the sessions. The emphasis of our discussions will be the characteristics of disability in a variety of centuries and cultures as well as lacunae in our understanding and debates in the literature. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) MW 2:30pm – 3:45pm Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-002: Instructor: Dayle DeLancey |
|
| From imaging devices to pharmaceuticals, medical technologies are often among the most novel and controversial aspects of contemporary society. Yet, U.S. history reveals that neither the emergence of high-profile medical technologies nor the dilemmas that often accompany their arrival are strictly ‘modern-day’ phenomena. History also demonstrates that such technologies tend to reflect not only the medical science, but also the social concerns, of the periods in which they have emerged. In this course, we will explore the ways in which a range of technologies – e.g. stethoscopes, spirometers, sphygmomanometers, hospital design, x-rays, reproductive technologies, gene therapy, virtual medicine, etc. – have at once shaped medicine and invited critique. Using readings from a range of sources illuminating key medical technologies in the 18th- to 21st-century U.S., we will analyze these technologies in historical, social, and theoretical context. Questions guiding our work will include: What are the historical roots of significant medical technologies? How did these technologies shape medicine? Why have physicians and the pubic embraced some medical technologies and not others? What non-medical technologies have influenced the development of medical technologies? How has the historiography of medical technology shaped the histories of medicine and science as academic disciplines? Has medical technology ever been “value free”? | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) 1:00-2:15 TR Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 669: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 728: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| The aims of this course are to provide understandings of the broader social, cultural and political contexts in which bioethical debates and medical practice occur, to explore social science perspectives on medicine and bioethics and to examine the use of qualitative and interdisciplinary methods to conduct research in these areas. Readings and discussion will draw upon research using ethnographic, life history, content, visual and narrative analysis. The course will cover issues in scientific research settings and the clinic. It is designed for the needs of graduate students in the social sciences and humanities, population health sciences, health policy, law, medicine, and health professions. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; Graduate, basic M, 12:00-2:30 p.m. Prerequisites: Graduate standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 730: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, advanced 4:00-5:30 TR; 1st 4 to 6 wks Prerequisites: Med Students, or by consent of instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 734: Instructors: Linda Hogle and Ron Kalil |
|
| Discovery in neuroscience is increasingly affecting all aspects of human life. This course provides a survey of the key ethical, legal and social issues that arise from the influence of neuroscience in education, business, law, health care and the military. Today’s neuroscience graduate students will be among the scientists, citizens and policymakers who will lead society through the maze of decisions regarding the appropriate uses of neuroscience. Topics include cognitive enhancements, deep brain stimulation, social uses of neuroimaging, and more.
The course will be offered in a novel format. We will join with students and faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in online sessions with web-based lectures and panel discussions, plus we will meet for discussion sessions. The course is appropriate for students in the following graduate programs: Neuroscience & Public Policy, Neuroscience Training Program, Clinical Neuroengineering and Psychology. |
Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate standing. 1:00 pm to 2:15 pm Fridays Prerequisites: Consent of instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 753: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| Advanced readings that examine major problems in modern international health. Focus on epidemiology and disease ecology; political economy of health; migration; quarantine; international health research; cross-cultural healing; mental and maternal health; growth of international health organizations. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, advanced Time & Place TBA Prerequisites: Grad st & concurrent reg in MHB, HOS or Pop Hlth 553 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 890: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prereq: Open to all 4th yr Med stdts (8 or 16 wks) & Grad stdts of all other depts (16 wks) |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919-001: Instructors: Richard Keller and Sara Guyer |
|
| According to Foucault, in the late-eighteenth century, governments began recognize populations, health, sanitation, sexuality, race, etc. as their domain and to marshal power through the management of human bodies. More recently, the emergence of stem cells, health care, hunger, and human rights, as major political issues, reflects the ongoing centrality of biological life for politics. This course will examine this convergence through a rigorous consideration of the theory of biopolitics and its cross-disciplinary application. We will focus on work in philosophy and literature, but also anthropology, sociology, and history. Topics may include: Biological Citizenship; Biopoetics; Hunger, Food, and Obesity; Biomedicine and subjectivity; etc. Authors: Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Roberto Esposito, Barbara Johnson, Judith Butler, Lauren Berlant, Philippe Bourgois, Achille Mbembe, Nikolas Rose, Paul Rabinow, among others. Over the course of the semester we also will welcome several guest lecturers into the seminar. | Meets with English 727
3 cr.; Graduate, advanced W 1:15 -3:15 Prerequisites: Prereq> Cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919-002: Instructor: Diane Paul |
|
| In the last two decades of the 19th century through at least the first three of this, the view that society should foster the breeding of those who possessed favorable traits and prevent or discourage the breeding of those who did not seemed common sense to most middle-class North Americans and Europeans. This course on the history and historiography of eugenics explores the following questions: Why did the concept of selective human breeding take hold in the late19th century? How crucial to this development was Francis Galton’s effort to demonstrate the hereditary character of mental and moral traits, the new popularity of animal breeding, and publication of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory? How did Galton’s work relate to earlier popular doctrines, such as phrenology and physiognomy, which stressed the importance of heredity and its implications for reproduction? Why did eugenics become increasingly popular after the turn of the twentieth century? What role did geneticists, religious leaders, and other groups play in its success? How was eugenics inflected by race and gender? What concrete forms did it take in various countries? How was eugenics linked to public health, and to the feminist, conservation and other social movements? Who opposed it, and for what reasons? How did both advances in genetics and revelations of Nazi atrocities affect its reputation? What lessons have scholars and popular writers drawn from its history, and why are they so fiercely contested? Throughout the seminar, we will be attentive to trends in the scholarly interpretation of eugenics and to current debates over how best to make sense of its fraught history. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; Graduate, advanced M 4:00-6:30 Prerequisites: Consent of inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999-001: Instructor: Robert Streiffer |
|
| Introduction to Research Ethics: For doctoral students in the life sci disciplines not already served by the existing courses in human biomedical research ethics. Satisfies Centr Mol Bio ethics requirement. | Meets with Hort 875
1 cr.; Graduate, advanced W 1:20 – 2:45 Prerequisites: Consent of instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prereq: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
Fall 2009
|
Medical History and Bioethics 218: Instructor: Susan E. Lederer |
|
| In March, 2009 President Barack Obama called for an ambitious reform of the American health care system. This time, he insisted, “the call for reform is coming from the bottom up, from all across the spectrum from doctors, nurses and patients: unions and businesses; hospitals, healthcare providers and community groups. This time there is no debate about whether all Americans should have quality, affordable healthcare, the only question is, how?” This course addresses the question of how the United States developed its current health care system. In doing so, the course will focus on the changes in medical care and medical science over the course of the twentieth century, as well as the changing face of the medical profession and the institutions which deliver health care. Topics include advances in medical technology and therapy, the debate over national health insurance, the cultural authority of the medical profession, and media representations of doctors, nurses, patients and hospitals. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; S (Social Science), C (L&S), E (Elementary); 11:00 – 12:15 TR Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 504: Instructor: Ronald Numbers |
|
| Health care in America since the colonial period; emphasis on social developments. Although the focus will be on the past, efforts will be made to relate the past to the present. | Crosslisted with History and History of Science
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate) 11:00 – 12:15 MW Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 507: Instructor: Walton Schalick |
|
| This course presents an in-depth survey of medicine and public health from its roots in Antiquity through approximately 1500. There are three principal themes. The first focuses on the evolving concepts of illness, beginning with the ideas of the Hippocratics, who lived during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. We will study how their ideas were taken up and transformed by later scholars, with particular emphasis being paid to medicine in medieval Islam and the reception of medical knowledge in western Europe after 500 A.D. through its transformation in the newfangled universities. We will also pay close attention to the teaching and practice of anatomy in those universities. The second theme studies the medical practitioners of this era, focusing primarily on physicians but also paying significant attention to surgeons, apothecaries, female healers and the various other health-providers who together comprised the practice of healing in the ancient and medieval worlds. Within that theme, the notion of the medieval medical marketplace will be an important one. The third theme centers on the evolution of health as a social and political problem. It includes the emergence of hospitals in Constantinople and Baghdad, two large medieval cities where caring for the sick poor became a matter of pressing concern and the evolution of public health through the period of the Black Death in the later fourteenth century and beyond.
Each week there will be one 75-minute lecture on Monday to introduce the weeks subject, followed by a 75- minute seminar/lecture on Wednesday to flesh out the readings in depth. Depending on the complexity of the material, readings for the seminar meeting will be about 100 pages per week. Readings depend primarily on a packet of readings, but we will also have recourse to two textbooks: Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine by Nancy Siraisi, and Carole Rawcliffe’s Sources for the History of Medicine in Late Medieval England. Written work will consist of 2 to 3 take-home essay assignments, each of 5-15 pages in length. |
Crosslisted with History of Science and with History
3 cr., H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) 2:30-3:45 MW Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructor: Judith Leavitt |
|
| This course surveys the history of public health in the United States from the colonial period to the late twentieth century, emphasizing many issues in the development of public responsibility for health that are relevant at the beginning of the 21st century. The course is run as a seminar/discussion, and the student requirements include regular and constructive class participation.
The course materials include many “primary” documents, writings from the period under discussion, so that students can come to appreciate and understand (but not necessarily to agree with) various historical points of view, with the ultimate goal of toleration of ambiguity and contradiction. The past was just as complex and interesting as the present, and in this course we aim to become familiar with some of the complexity of human experiences and work with the historical record on its own terms, even as we also seek to understand what we can learn from the past to help us to understand and explain the present. We sit today at the beginning of the twenty-first century, reading history to enrich ourselves culturally; at the same time we can use our knowledge to make our world in this new century a little bit better. The seminar-discussion approach grows directly out of an appreciation of the benefits of active learning, in which the professor is a facilitator of learning rather than a dispenser of information and students actively pursue their education rather than passively receive knowledge. The general goals of a university education focus on critical thinking, being willing to explore ideas contrary to one’s own beliefs, knowing when information or data are relevant to an issue and how to seek and find that information and apply it methodologically to the problem at hand. Class time will be a time to present new material, but even more, it will be used to provide experiences in learning what to do with new material and to clear up problems so that students can take responsibility for learning and solving problems rather than waiting for them to be solved by the instructor. Cooperative and group learning and exercises will be encouraged, with the assumption that everyone brings something valuable and unique to the class. Active discussion, expressing one’s ideas and getting reactions from other students and the teacher, has been demonstrated to make a big difference in learning, retention, and use of knowledge. Verbalizing an idea can be one way of getting checks and extensions of it. Thus students will be required to talk about their ideas openly, listen and respond to others’ ideas, remain sensitive to the feelings of other class members, and take responsibility for moving class discussions forward. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), C (L&S), I (Intermediate) 1:00-2:15 TR Prerequisites: Jr st & cons inst. Graduate students registered in 509 must register concurrently in MHB 709. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 524: Instructor: Judith Houck |
|
| What causes homosexuality? Can frigidity in women best be cured by a pill, an analyst’s couch, or sweeping social change? Are sexual psychopaths sick or criminal? What determines a person’s sex? Are there therapeutic uses for sex toys?.
Over the course of the twentieth century medicine and biomedical science have become increasingly influential in the social and cultural lives of Americans. This course looks at the changing place of medicine in our public and private lives. We will be guided by five particular questions: How has medicine (and scientific authority) helped to define and control appropriate sexual behavior? How has medicine become involved in the definition and creation of sex? What do medical interventions reveal about social and cultural ideas of sex and sexuality? How do campaigns against sexual disease illuminate cultural judgments about social groups? How do boundaries defining appropriate sexual behavior also define appropriate sex/gender roles? |
Crosslisted with History of Science and with Women’s Studies
3 cr.; H (Humanities), C (L&S), I (Intermediate) 11:00 – 12:15 TR Prerequisites: Prev history (incl med hist & hist sci) crse preferred. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 526: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| There is a long history of bodily modification throughout time and across many kinds of societies. Modifications can be for functional restoration, augmentation, enhancement, or aesthetic purposes. This course will explore the ways that bodily modifications and the development of body-altering technologies co-evolve with social and technical understandings of appearance, function and perception.
Industrialized societies are experiencing dramatic variations in individuals’ body size and appearance, due to changes in nutritional and consumption patterns, changing cultural views of the body, and the emergence of technologies that change the physical appearance and functioning of both healthy and disabled bodies. At the same time, innovations in biomedicine and bioengineering are leading to novel forms of designed bodies. But just what is a “properly functioning” body in light of emerging biology-altering technologies and what is its relation to body image and perception? Alternate body forms, including those that dramatically change appearance, or may incorporate synthetic parts could make a body “more normal” or could potentially create improved features. Yet there are social and ethical implications for such transformations. What do we consider to be “deficient” or “normal” and why? Also, some kinds of modifications of appearance or function may be understood by some as “pathological” or “unnatural,” while others are viewed positively, as ““therapeutic” or “empowering.” How do we make sense? The course will create an opportunity for students to explore the relations of biological, cultural, and technological aspects of bodily modifications. Students will learn about issues of identity and subjectivity as related to physical appearance and functioning, the ethical use of body modification technologies, and public health and policy frameworks and implications. The course will appeal to all social science students, as well as students seeking careers in the medical professions, psychology, ethics, and health policy. |
Not crosslisted
3 cr.; C (L&S), I (Intermediate) 1:00 – 2:15 TR Prerequisites: So st or cons inst. Graduate students must register concurrently in MHB 726. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the ethical issues central to clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants who master this course material will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; C (Counts for LAS credit, L&S), A (Advanced) 3:30-5:30 R |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| This seminar explores the relationship between health and citizenship. Among its key themes are the following questions: When did the link between health and human rights first emerge? How has it developed historically? What factors define citizenship? To what extent does physical and mental health constitute a gauge of enfranchisement and of one’s access to power in the modern state? In what ways does the de facto absence of citizenship – in cases like those of migrant laborers, ethnic minorities, and colonial subjects – delimit the possibility of a human right to health? How have structural health inequities historically posed significant threats to global security? Such questions have been central to studies of the political economy of health and disease, anthropology, and area studies, but have been less apparent in historical research. This seminar, limited to 15 students, offers a key means for integrating these questions into an interdisciplinary approach to global health. The course will focus primarily on the development of the relationship between health and citizenship in modern Europe beginning with the French Revolution and through the rise of the welfare state before exploring the implications of ideas about health and human rights in a global context. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; C (L&S), A (Advanced) 1:00 – 3:30 T Prerequisites: Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 709: Instructor: Judith Leavitt |
|
| See MHB 509. Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature concerning public health issues and problems in America from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and efforts made toward their solutions. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, Advanced Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Med Hist 509. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 726: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| See MHB 526. Ethical and cultural dimensions of chemical, surgical and biological therapeutics and enhancements to the human body. Explores body-altering technologies within cultural understandings of appearance, function, perception and identity. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate basic Time/Room TBA Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Med Hist 526 or cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 890: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr. A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prereq: Open to all 4th yr Med stdts (8 or 16 wks) & Grad stdts of all other depts (16 wks) |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
Spring 2009
|
Medical History and Bioethics 431: Instructor: Judith Leavitt |
|
| American women’s childbirth experiences from the colonial period to the present. Childbirth as a cultural as well as a biological event. Basic physiological information for understanding and evaluating changing approaches to pregnancy and childbirth. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Women’s Studies
3 cr.; S (Social Science), D (Intermediate or Advanced) 1:00-2:15 TR Prerequisites: Women St 103 or 430 or equiv; or cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 508: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| Medicine in Europe from the 18th century to mid-20th century, investigating changes in disease and demography, state interest in health care, the medical professions, and both scientific and alternative medical ideas. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with History
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) 2:30-3:45 TR Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructor: Norman C. Fost |
|
| Ethical issues apparently created by new biomedical technologies, such as genetic screening, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, in vitro fertilization, behavior modification, psychosurgery, and transplantation. | Crosslisted with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Lecture T 11:00-12:15; Discussions R 11:00-12:15, 9:30-10:45 or 2:30-3:45 Prerequisites: Junior standing; Includes graduate and professional careers |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559: Instructor: Jo Scheder |
|
| This interdisciplinary course is grounded in medical anthropology, Latina/o Studies, and bioethics, with special attention to the experience of health and illness, beliefs and practices, and health disparities. Latino/as are now the ‘majority minority’ population in the United States, yet the cultural dynamism, variation and beliefs of Latino/as are largely unknown to health practitioners and researchers, or are assumed to parallel those of the dominant culture of the U.S. Latina/os are over-represented in a host of chronic diseases, and have disproportionate exposure to environmental sources of ill health. Latino/as were at the forefront of the environmental health movement and pioneered the use of community-based health workers, yet they remain under-represented in the health professions. They have been subjected to medical experimentation, but currently are left out of many positive health research agendas. The course will consider how the diverse experiential histories of Mexican, Caribbean and Central Americans contribute differently to health status, relative risks for illness, access to care, and to health beliefs and practices.
Provisional topic areas include: 1) Bio-Ethical issues: Contemporary concerns and historical legacies: -Testing of contraceptives on Latinas -Involuntary sterilizations -Palliative care and end-of-life concerns -Aging and elder care; 2) Disparities: Diabetes, HIV and other diseases: -Current research on discrimination, racism and illness -Access to care, and equity/disparities in treatment -Environmental justice & health; 3) Beliefs and Practices: the meaning of health and illness: -Ethnomedicine – traditional healing, e.g., curanderismo, yerbas, etc.; pilgrimage sites and shrines; variation in contemporary practices and explanatory models -Interactions with Health Care Providers; 4) Stress in relation to health and mental health issues; 5) Health in relation to trauma, e.g., war, dislocation (refugee, immigrant concerns) |
Meets with CHICAL 530
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) 2:30-5:00 W Prerequisites: Cons inst; enrollment may be limited depending on topic and approach |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Staff |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology to microorganisms, crops, and non-human animals. Readings cover moral theory, technology studies, political philosophy, the science used in biotechnology, and current regulations governing its use. | Crosslisted with Agronomy, Rural Sociology, and Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Time TBA Prerequisite: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-001: Instructor: Walton Schalick |
|
| Disability is a word which surrounds us. From debates about end-of-life issues to Social Security from test-taking ‘allowances’ to Not-Dead-Yet, from Medicaid cutbacks to Terry Schiavo, disability is in the media, on our lips and in our ears. What is disability? How has disability changed over time and in different cultures? Where does such an idea come from? What social, cultural, and political assumptions is it based upon? Examining a wide range of historical arguments about the nature and purpose of disability, from pre-history to Plato, to medieval theologians, to more contemporary works, we will approach the history of disability in Western thought and social practice in terms of its relation to arguments about the role of human development and the formulation of personhood, citizenship, and social well being. The readings will include a thick mixture of primary sources in translation and secondary sources, both classic and newly published. We will encounter a variety of techniques and tools used by historians and other scholars as we course through the sessions. The emphasis of our discussions will be the characteristics of disability in a variety of centuries and cultures as well as lacunae in our understanding and debates in the literature. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) MW 2:30pm – 3:45pm Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-002: Instructor: Staff |
|
| This course explores the historical context of various United States Supreme Court cases important to the development of American public health and medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries. This is not a public health law course, but rather one that uses a legal perspective to understand the history of public health and medicine in America. It will cover cases that feature conflicts over civil liberties and public health. Taught in a lecture/discussion format, students will read a selection of both primary and secondary sources to study the historical and constitutional issues raised by each case. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time TBA Prerequisite: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 708: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature concerning medicine in Europe from the 18th century to mid-20th century, investigating changes in disease and demography, state interest in health care, and medical professions, and both scientific and alternative medical ideas. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, advanced Time TBA Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Med Hist 508 |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 720: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| How and in what ways is HIV/AIDS more than a retroviral infection? How does this disease provide a critical filter for mapping the patterns and mechanisms of global interaction in the twenty-first century? This one-credit elective explores the global AIDS pandemic from social and humanistic perspectives. The course will provide an intensive introduction to the relationships between biology, culture, and society in an era of globalization that the pandemic reveals and shapes. A central focus for the course is the inextricability of connections between the epidemiological, political, economic, and historical dimensions of HIV/AIDS. Key themes include the origins of AIDS; the meaning of risk; disease, poverty, and development; race, gender, and vulnerability; the politics of HIV/AIDS research and prevention; epidemics and epizootics: the links between human and simian AIDS; and the experience of AIDS. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, basic W, 12:05-12:55 Prerequisites: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 734-002: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| This graduate-level course is designed to introduce students to ethical, policy and social issues related to regenerative medicine, specifically stem cell research. Students will gain an understanding of current and past legal, political and moral issues related to the derivation of embryos for research, be familiar with guidelines for research ethics (including derivation of cells, donor issues) and gain an understanding of the relations of governments, various public groups and the media in the face of controversial research. Clinical ethics issues specific to stem cell research (adult and embryonic) will be illustrated using examples of existing and potential clinical trials.
Appropriate for students in public health, law, or the social sciences, as well as medical, science and engineering students interested in regenerative medicine-related research. Meets full semester, more in-depth than 1 credit option. |
Not cross-listed
3 cr. 1:30 pm to 3:45 pm Fridays Prerequisites: consent of instructor |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 734-003: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| This graduate-level course is designed to introduce students to ethical, policy and social issues related to regenerative medicine, specifically stem cell research. Students will gain an understanding of current and past legal, political and moral issues related to the derivation of embryos for research, be familiar with guidelines for research ethics (including derivation of cells, donor issues) and gain an understanding of the relations of governments, various public groups and the media in the face of controversial research. Clinical ethics issues specific to stem cell research (adult and embryonic) will be illustrated using examples of existing and potential clinical trials.
Designed for med students, postdoctoral and grad students in the biosciences and engineering, particularly those conducting research in regenerative medicine. Meets first 7 weeks only. |
Not cross-listed
1 cr. 1:30 pm to 3:45 pm Fridays Prerequisites: Graduate standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 890: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr. A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prereq: Open to all 4th yr Med stdts (8 or 16 wks) & Grad stdts of all other depts (16 wks) |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Susan Lederer |
|
| This graduate seminar focuses on the recent and renewed interest in food, its production, distribution, marketing and consumption. From farm to fork, from meat to mung bean, paleoagriculture to genetically modified foods, the foods people have eaten and continue to eat reflect assumptions about culture, morality, nutrition and health. From the vantage point of history of medicine and history of science, this seminar considers issues of food safety, the development of nutritional guidelines, and the ways science and medicine have influenced food and diet. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; Graduate, advanced M 9:55 am – 11:55 am Prerequisites: Grad st. or cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
Fall 2008
|
Medical History and Bioethics 275: Instructors: Judith Houck and Richard Keller |
|
| This course surveys the medical and scientific constructions of ideas about race and ethnicity since the eighteenth century. We will place the development of racial theories of sickness and health in a broad social and political context – and, in particular, explain the medical salience of race in the setting of slavery and colonialism. Discussions will focus primarily on North America and Europe, but will also explore the making of knowledge about race in global settings. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Afro-American Studies
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science),C (L&S), E (Elementary); 2:30 – 3:45 TR; Discussion W or F 8:50 or 9:55 Open to Freshmen. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 504: Instructor: Ronald Numbers |
|
| Health care in America since the colonial period; emphasis on social developments. | Crosslisted with History and History of Science
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate) 11:00 – 12:15 TR Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 507: Instructor: Walton Schalick |
|
| This course presents an in-depth survey of medicine and public health from its roots in Antiquity through approximately 1500. There are three principal themes. The first focuses on the evolving concepts of illness, beginning with the ideas of the Hippocratics, who lived during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. We will study how their ideas were taken up and transformed by later scholars, with particular emphasis being paid to medicine in medieval Islam and the reception of medical knowledge in western Europe after 500 A.D. through its transformation in the newfangled universities. We will also pay close attention to the teaching and practice of anatomy in those universities. The second theme studies the medical practitioners of this era, focusing primarily on physicians but also paying significant attention to surgeons, apothecaries, female healers and the various other health-providers who together comprised the practice of healing in the ancient and medieval worlds. Within that theme, the notion of the medieval medical marketplace will be an important one. The third theme centers on the evolution of health as a social and political problem. It includes the emergence of hospitals in Constantinople and Baghdad, two large medieval cities where caring for the sick poor became a matter of pressing concern and the evolution of public health through the period of the Black Death in the later fourteenth century and beyond.
Each week there will be one 75-minute lecture on Monday to introduce the weeks subject, followed by a 75- minute seminar/lecture on Wednesday to flesh out the readings in depth. Depending on the complexity of the material, readings for the seminar meeting will be about 100 pages per week. Readings depend primarily on a packet of readings, but we will also have recourse to two textbooks: Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine by Nancy Siraisi, and Carole Rawcliffe’s Sources for the History of Medicine in Late Medieval England. Written work will consist of 3 take-home essay assignments, each of 5-6 pages in length. |
Crosslisted with History of Science and with History
3 cr., H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) 2:30-3:45 MW Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructor: Judith Leavitt |
|
| This course surveys the history of public health in the United States from the colonial period to the late twentieth century, emphasizing many issues in the development of public responsibility for health that are relevant at the beginning of the 21st century. The course is run as a seminar/discussion, and the student requirements include regular and constructive class participation.
The course materials include many “primary” documents, writings from the period under discussion, so that students can come to appreciate and understand (but not necessarily to agree with) various historical points of view, with the ultimate goal of toleration of ambiguity and contradiction. The past was just as complex and interesting as the present, and in this course we aim to become familiar with some of the complexity of human experiences and work with the historical record on its own terms, even as we also seek to understand what we can learn from the past to help us to understand and explain the present. We sit today at the beginning of the twenty-first century, reading history to enrich ourselves culturally; at the same time we can use our knowledge to make our world in this new century a little bit better. The seminar-discussion approach grows directly out of an appreciation of the benefits of active learning, in which the professor is a facilitator of learning rather than a dispenser of information and students actively pursue their education rather than passively receive knowledge. The general goals of a university education focus on critical thinking, being willing to explore ideas contrary to one’s own beliefs, knowing when information or data are relevant to an issue and how to seek and find that information and apply it methodologically to the problem at hand. Class time will be a time to present new material, but even more, it will be used to provide experiences in learning what to do with new material and to clear up problems so that students can take responsibility for learning and solving problems rather than waiting for them to be solved by the instructor. Cooperative and group learning and exercises will be encouraged, with the assumption that everyone brings something valuable and unique to the class. Active discussion, expressing one’s ideas and getting reactions from other students and the teacher, has been demonstrated to make a big difference in learning, retention, and use of knowledge. Verbalizing an idea can be one way of getting checks and extensions of it. Thus students will be required to talk about their ideas openly, listen and respond to others’ ideas, remain sensitive to the feelings of other class members, and take responsibility for moving class discussions forward. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate) 1:00-2:15 TR Prerequisites: Junior standing and consent of instructor. Graduate students registered in 509 must register concurrently in MHB 709. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 513: Instructor: Gregg Mitman |
|
| Explores the historical relationships between environmental change and human health from the 17th through the 20th century. Topics include colonialism and disease, medical geography, urban pollution and reform, workplace hazards, environmental risk, and the anti-toxics and environmental justice movements. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Environmental studies
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), A (Advanced) 9:30 – 10:45 TR Prerequisites: Junior standing. Graduate students registered in 513 must register concurrently in MHB 713. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman C. Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the ethical issues central to clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants who master this course material will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; C (Counts for LAS credit, L&S), A (Advanced) 3:30-5:30 R, 1220 HSLC. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| This course concerns cultural and ethical issues related to stem cells and related technologies. Topics include: history of the embryo (moral status, representations, legal protections); state, federal & international policies and regulations; cell & tissue donation issues; the public arena (controversies, religious and political debates, cultural concerns, the media), clinical and patient care issues, and popular culture (film, fiction, biographies). Open to all undergraduates (no advanced science required).
NOTE: This course differs from MHB 610 Regenerative Medicine and Society, which will be taught in Spring 2009. This course is more in-depth regarding research ethics, regulatory issues, international collaborations, and clinical trials among other topics and is appropriate for scientists, engineers, advanced social scientists, and public health and medical students with research or practice issues in stem cell, tissue engineering and other regenerative medicine techniques. |
Not cross-listed
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) 4:00-6:30 M Prerequisite: Cons inst. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668: Instructor: Susan Lederer |
|
| This course surveys the search for the healthy body in American society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Topics include the changing American food supply and the rise of “fast foods,” dietary regimens and dieting, medicine and nutrition science, bariatric surgery (i.e. stomach stapling), and efforts to create “magic bullets” for weight loss. Course format is lecture/discussion and requires active and engaged student participation. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; C (L&S), A (Advanced) 9:55-10:45 MWF Prerequisites: Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 709: Instructor: Judith Leavitt |
|
| Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature concerning public health issues and problems in America from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and efforts made toward their solutions. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, Advanced Time TBA Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Med Hist 509. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 713: Instructor: Gregg Mitman |
|
| Advanced readings that examine major problems in environment and health. See description under MHB 513. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate basic Time TBA Prerequisites: Grad st and concurrent registration in Med Hist 513. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 890: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr. A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prereq: Open to all 4th yr Med stdts (8 or 16 wks) & Grad stdts of all other depts (16 wks) |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
Spring 2008
|
Medical History and Bioethics 504: Instructor: Ronald Numbers |
|
| This course is designed to acquaint students with the history of health care in America. Although the focus will be on the past, efforts will be made to relate the past to the present. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with history
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate) 11:00-12:15 MW Prerequisites: Instructor consent required. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 531: Instructor: Judith Houck |
|
| Women’s relationship to medical institutions, constructions of disease, and their own bodies differs from that of men. This course examines historically the health issues women have faced and how those issues have differed according to race and class. In particular, it explores the personal experiences and the medical views of women’s life-cycle events, the role of women as health care providers and activists, and the effect of gender on the perception and meaning of illness. | Crosslisted with History of Science and with Women’s Studies
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate) 9:30-10:45 TR Prerequisite: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 558: Instructors: Norman Fost and Robert Streiffer |
|
| Ethical issues apparently created by new biomedical technologies, such as genetic screening, prenatal diagnosis, prolongation of life, treatment of severe birth defects, in vitro fertilization, behavior modification, psychosurgery, and transplantation. | Crosslisted with Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) Lecture T 11:00-12:15; Discussions R 11:00-12:15, 9:30-10:45 or 2:30-3:45 Prerequisites: Junior standing; Includes graduate and professional careers |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 565: Instructor: Robert Streiffer |
|
| Study of ethical issues arising from the application of modern biotechnology to microorganisms, crops, and non-human animals. Readings cover moral theory, technology studies, political philosophy, the science used in biotechnology, and current regulations governing its use. | Crosslisted with Agronomy, Rural Sociology, and Philosophy
3 cr.; H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) R 2:25pm – 4:55 pm Prerequisite: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-001: Instructor: Walton Schalick |
|
| Disability is a word which surrounds us. From debates about end-of-life issues to Social Security from test-taking ‘allowances’ to Not-Dead-Yet, from Medicaid cutbacks to Terry Schiavo, disability is in the media, on our lips and in our ears. What is disability? How has disability changed over time and in different cultures? Where does such an idea come from? What social, cultural, and political assumptions is it based upon? Examining a wide range of historical arguments about the nature and purpose of disability, from pre-history to Plato, to medieval theologians, to more contemporary works, we will approach the history of disability in Western thought and social practice in terms of its relation to arguments about the role of human development and the formulation of personhood, citizenship, and social well being. The readings will include a thick mixture of primary sources in translation and secondary sources, both classic and newly published. We will encounter a variety of techniques and tools used by historians and other scholars as we course through the sessions. The emphasis of our discussions will be the characteristics of disability in a variety of centuries and cultures as well as lacunae in our understanding and debates in the literature. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) T 2:30pm – 5:00pm Prerequisite: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-002: Instructor: Eric Boyle |
|
| This seminar provides a survey of alternative medical thought, institutions, and practitioners and examines changing concepts of health and disease in the history of the United States. In particular, we will discuss the nature of competition in the medical marketplace; points of negotiation between mainstream medicine, popular understandings of health, and alternative or complementary practices; competing definitions of science in medical research and practice; the role of institutions in health care delivery; and the relationship between politics and health care alternatives. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) TR, 2:30-3:45 Prerequisite: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668-003: Instructor: Eric Boyle |
|
| This seminar examines how technology came to play a dominant role in medical research and practice in the twentieth century. We will discuss the relationship between technology and the production of medical knowledge; the important role played by technological advances in the process of medical professionalization; the complex relationships between technology, medical institutions, consumers, and industry; and the ways in which technology has played an integral role in shaping discussions of gender, sexuality, class, and race. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; A (Advanced) TR, 11:00-12:15 Prerequisite: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 720: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| How and in what ways is HIV/AIDS more than a retroviral infection? How does this disease provide a critical filter for mapping the patterns and mechanisms of global interaction in the twenty-first century? This one-credit elective explores the global AIDS pandemic from social and humanistic perspectives. The course will provide an intensive introduction to the relationships between biology, culture, and society in an era of globalization that the pandemic reveals and shapes. A central focus for the course is the inextricability of connections between the epidemiological, political, economic, and historical dimensions of HIV/AIDS. Key themes include the origins of AIDS; the meaning of risk; disease, poverty, and development; race, gender, and vulnerability; the politics of HIV/AIDS research and prevention; epidemics and epizootics: the links between human and simian AIDS; and the experience of AIDS. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, basic W, 12:05-12:55 Prerequisite: Junior standing |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 728: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| Social science perspectives on medicine with emphasis on biomedical ethics. Overview of the qualitative research methods of ethnography, life history, content, visual and narrative analysis. (course flyer) | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; Graduate, basic F 9:00 am – 11:30 am Prerequisites: Grad st. One of the following: Anthro 365, Soc 531, Pop Hlth 780 or equivs, or cons inst. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 734: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| Stem cell, tissue engineering and nanobiotech in social contexts. Ethical and political issues in emerging research & clinical areas. For grad students in science or bioengeneering, medicine, population health; others by permission. | Not cross-listed
2 cr.; Graduate, basic M 4:00 pm – 6:30 pm Prerequisites: Grad st. or cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 890: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr. A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prereq: Open to all 4th yr Med stdts (8 or 16 wks) & Grad stdts of all other depts (16 wks) |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Judith Houck |
|
| How are health and illness gendered? This seminar will explore the gendered experience and construction of both health and illness in American history. It will explore four central questions: How do gendered constructions of health, fitness, and illness create and reinforce racial and class divisions? How have health concerns led to race, class, and sex-centered social activism? How and why are issues of health and illness important to nationalism? How are health, illness, and consumerism linked?
This should be considered a “reading” seminar. Assignments will include book reviews, class presentations, and a historiographical essay. |
Not cross-listed
3 cr.; Graduate, advanced M 2:30 pm – 5:00 pm Prerequisites: Grad st. or cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999-001: Instructors: Robert Streiffer and Sara Patterson |
|
| For doctoral students in the life sciences disciplines not already served by the existing courses in human biomedical research ethics. Meets with Hort 875 in Plant Sci 473. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, basic W 1:30 pm – 2:45 pm Prerequisites: Grad st. or cons inst |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |
Fall 2007
|
Medical History and Bioethics 350: Instructor: Gregg Mitman |
|
| How has film shaped past and present interactions between humans and the environment across different cultures and landscapes? The success of An Inconvenient Truth and March of the Penguins and the impact, in all of its myriad meanings, of Blue Vinyl and The Real Dirt on Farmer John are recent reminders of the extent to which film can inform and engage the public in critical environmental issues that affect human and animal lives across the globe. And, yet, the very different conventions of these films also remind us, as the French film critic, André Bazin, once noted: “The bounds of the science film are as undefined as those of the documentary. But, after all, who cares!”
We take Bazin’s dilettantish attitude toward scientific cinema in exploring the history and theory of an amalgam of films that, for better or worse, might be labeled environmental cinema. As this seminar reveals, however, what we call environmental cinema is itself shaped by the changing cultural and social meanings of nature and the environment over time. From travelogue-exploration films of the 1920s, to the experimental avant-garde of surrealist scientific filmmakers such as Jean Painlevé, from the worlds of Walt Disney to those of Jacques Cousteau, from the social documentaries of John Grierson and Pare Lorentz to more contemporary cinema documenting the struggles of peoples confronting issues of environmental injustice across the globe, this seminar will call students to rethink the ways in which cinema has shaped how we see, think about, consume, and politicize nature in both past and present societies. Students will be required to attend film screenings to be held throughout the semester, which will take place on Thursday or Friday evenings. In addition to select film reviews, the main assignment will be for students to choose a recent or historical environmental film and write a 15-20 page essay analyzing its myriad impacts—economic, cultural, political, and social. How does one measure a film’s impact? Did the film alter public attitudes toward nature or the environment in significant ways? The seminar will lay the theoretical and empirical groundwork for students to be able to address these questions in their final assignment. |
Meets with Env Studies 402, Lec. 5 and Comm Arts 469
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced); 9:00-11:30 F Prerequisites: Sophomore Honors or Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 394: Instructor: Ronald Numbers |
|
| From the colonial period to the present; emphasis on the development of scientific institutions and the influence of science on American life. | Crosslisted with History and with History of Science
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) 11:00-12:15 TR Prerequisites: Junior standing or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 504: Instructor: Eric Boyle |
|
| Health care in America since the colonial period; emphasis on social developments. | Crosslisted with History and History of Science
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate) 4:00-5:15 MW Prerequisites: Junior standing or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 507: Instructor: Walton Schalick |
|
| This course presents an in-depth survey of medicine and public health from its roots in Antiquity through approximately 1500. There are three principal themes. The first focuses on the evolving concepts of illness, beginning with the ideas of the Hippocratics, who lived during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. We will study how their ideas were taken up and transformed by later scholars, with particular emphasis being paid to medicine in medieval Islam and the reception of medical knowledge in western Europe after 500 A.D. through its transformation in the newfangled universities. We will also pay close attention to the teaching and practice of anatomy in those universities. The second theme studies the medical practitioners of this era, focusing primarily on physicians but also paying significant attention to surgeons, apothecaries, female healers and the various other health-providers who together comprised the practice of healing in the ancient and medieval worlds. Within that theme, the notion of the medieval medical marketplace will be an important one. The third theme centers on the evolution of health as a social and political problem. It includes the emergence of hospitals in Constantinople and Baghdad, two large medieval cities where caring for the sick poor became a matter of pressing concern and the evolution of public health through the period of the Black Death in the later fourteenth century and beyond.
Each week there will be one 75-minute lecture on Monday to introduce the weeks subject, followed by a 75- minute seminar/lecture on Wednesday to flesh out the readings in depth. Depending on the complexity of the material, readings for the seminar meeting will be about 100 pages per week. Readings depend primarily on a packet of readings, but we will also have recourse to two textbooks: Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine by Nancy Siraisi, and Carole Rawcliffe’s Sources for the History of Medicine in Late Medieval England. Written work will consist of 3 take-home essay assignments, each of 5-6 pages in length. |
Crosslisted with History of Science and with History
3 cr., H (Humanities), I (Intermediate) 2:30-3:45 MW Prerequisite: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 509: Instructor: Judith Leavitt |
|
| This course surveys the history of public health in the United States from the colonial period to the late twentieth century, emphasizing many issues in the development of public responsibility for health that are relevant at the beginning of the 21st century. The course is run as a seminar/discussion, and the student requirements include regular and constructive class participation.
The course materials include many “primary” documents, writings from the period under discussion, so that students can come to appreciate and understand (but not necessarily to agree with) various historical points of view, with the ultimate goal of toleration of ambiguity and contradiction. The past was just as complex and interesting as the present, and in this course we aim to become familiar with some of the complexity of human experiences and work with the historical record on its own terms, even as we also seek to understand what we can learn from the past to help us to understand and explain the present. We sit today at the beginning of the twenty-first century, reading history to enrich ourselves culturally; at the same time we can use our knowledge to make our world in this new century a little bit better. The seminar-discussion approach grows directly out of an appreciation of the benefits of active learning, in which the professor is a facilitator of learning rather than a dispenser of information and students actively pursue their education rather than passively receive knowledge. The general goals of a university education focus on critical thinking, being willing to explore ideas contrary to one’s own beliefs, knowing when information or data are relevant to an issue and how to seek and find that information and apply it methodologically to the problem at hand. Class time will be a time to present new material, but even more, it will be used to provide experiences in learning what to do with new material and to clear up problems so that students can take responsibility for learning and solving problems rather than waiting for them to be solved by the instructor. Cooperative and group learning and exercises will be encouraged, with the assumption that everyone brings something valuable and unique to the class. Active discussion, expressing one’s ideas and getting reactions from other students and the teacher, has been demonstrated to make a big difference in learning, retention, and use of knowledge. Verbalizing an idea can be one way of getting checks and extensions of it. Thus students will be required to talk about their ideas openly, listen and respond to others’ ideas, remain sensitive to the feelings of other class members, and take responsibility for moving class discussions forward. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; B (Biological Science), I (Intermediate) 1:00-2:15 TR Prerequisites: Junior standing and consent of instructor. Graduate students registered in MHB 509 must register concurrently in MHB 709. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 532: Instructor: Judith Houck |
|
| Do bodies have a history? What do bodies mean? Are we our bodies? Who decides the value of a body? What are the consequences of having the wrong body? Perhaps it all started with the nature-nurture debate. By dividing the living world into biology (flesh, blood, genes, hormones, germs) and culture (environment, politics, tradition, commerce, history), we have come to regard bodies as objects immune to historical forces. This course challenges this understanding of bodies. By focusing primarily on American bodies in the 19th and 20th centuries, this course demonstrates that human bodies have social and cultural histories. The lived experience and cultural meanings of human bodies are dependent on their social settings. Biology is surely not irrelevant to bodily experience. But the interpretation and valuation of biology, indeed what is considered biological, change over time. Within a larger three-unit framework, this course will highlight the social values placed on different bodies and the changing social expectations bodies create. This course will pay particular attention to the following questions: How have cultural and social changes in American history influenced the meaning and experience of bodies? How have attempts to establish social status and difference focused on bodies? How has the social and economic value of bodies differed according to race, class, sex, and “fitness?” How has a focus on bodies individualized social problems? | Crosslisted with Women’s Studies and History of Science
3 cr.; H (Humanities), A (Advanced) 9:30-10:15 MW Prerequisites: Women St 103 or other women’s studies crse required; prev hist (incl med hist & hist sci) crse preferred. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 545: Instructor: Norman C. Fost |
|
| This course will explore and examine the ethical issues central to clinical research, regulations governing clinical investigation, and the role of good clinical practice for clinical trials. Participants who master this course material will be able to think critically about the ethical issues central to clinical research and know the basic elements of the federal regulations affecting clinical investigation. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; C (Counts for LAS credit, L&S), A (Advanced) 3:30-5;30 R |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 553: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| SARS in East Asia and Canada; AIDS and malaria in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America; malnutrition and deficiency diseases in the developing world; stress, heart disease, and eating disorders in the United States and Europe: wherever we turn, we are assaulted by these images. The Internet, television, and print journalism ensure that we are never unaware of the health crises that besiege our globalizing society, to the extent that we see these problems as a symptom of globalization itself. Yet such concern is far from new. Historians and epidemiologists have long recognized that the “microbial unification of the world” dates at least to the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Throughout the nineteenth century, cholera devastated South Asia, Europe, and the United States; a century ago, bubonic plague and flu each killed millions globally. In this course, we will draw on a wide range of historical and anthropological materials and methods to examine the history of public health and medicine as international phenomena. Focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we will explore topics such as the connections between global pandemics of infectious disease and European colonial expansion; strategies for curtailing the spread of disease across borders; historical and contemporary anxieties about the health consequences of global migration; and the emergence of a global medical marketplace. Particular themes include the connection between health and wealth; the relationship between culture and medical ideas and practices; and the tensions of practicing medicine in multicultural settings. Graduate students must register concurrently in MHB 753. | Crosslisted with Population Health Sciences and with History of Science
3 cr.; Z (Humanities or Social Science), I (Intermediate) 2:30-3;45 TR Prerequisites: Junior standing or consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-001: Instructor: Linda Hogle |
|
| There is a long history of bodily modification throughout time and across many kinds of societies. Modifications can be for functional restoration, augmentation, enhancement, or aesthetic purposes. This course will explore the ways that bodily modifications and the development of body-altering technologies co-evolve with social and technical understandings of appearance, function and perception. Industrialized societies are experiencing dramatic variations in individuals’ body size and appearance, due to changes in nutritional and consumption patterns, changing cultural views of the body, and the emergence of technologies that change the physical appearance and functioning of both healthy and disabled bodies. At the same time, innovations in biomedicine and bioengineering are leading to novel forms of designed bodies. But just what is a “properly functioning” body in light of emerging biology-altering technologies and what is its relation to body image and perception? Alternate body forms, including those that dramatically change appearance, or may incorporate synthetic parts could make a body “more normal” or could potentially create improved features. Yet there are social and ethical implications for such transformations. What do we consider to be “deficient” or “normal” and why? Also, some kinds of modifications of appearance or function may be understood by some as “pathological” or “unnatural,” while others are viewed positively, as “therapeutic” or “empowering.” How do we make sense The course will create an opportunity for students to explore the relations of biological, cultural, and technological aspects of bodily modifications. Students will learn about issues of identity and subjectivity as related to physical appearance and functioning, the ethical use of body modification technologies, and public health and policy frameworks and implications. The course will appeal to all social science students, as well as students seeking careers in the medical professions, psychology, ethics, and health policy. Open to upper level undergraduates; graduate students welcome. 1. Introduction: What’s “normal?” What’s an “able” body? 2. Dysmorphias, Body size/shape, body image, body building: politics, ethics, consumer culture 3. Prosthetics, Replacements, Augmentations and Aesthetics in rich and poor countries: Subjectivity and objectivity 4. Engineered biology: techno-biological substitutes for tissue and organs | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) 1:00-2:15 TR Prerequisites: Cons inst; enrollment may be limited depending on topic and approach. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 559-003: Instructor: Jo Scheder |
|
| Understandings of aging, grief, death and dying, are culturally and historically shaped. The course will explore cultural and ethical dimensions of: aging and regard for elders; end-of-life perspectives; cross-cultural experiences and meanings of death, grief and loss; and potential relevance for understanding health disparities. | Not cross-listed
3 cr.; H (Humanities), D (Intermediate or Advanced) 2:25-4:55 M Prerequisites: Prerequisites: Cons inst; enrollment may be limited depending on topic and approach. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 668: Instructor: Eric Boyle |
|
| This course provides a survey of alternative medical philosophies, institutions, and practitioners while exploring changing concepts of health and disease in the history of the United States.
Primary emphasis will be placed on the following topics: 1) the nature of competition in the medical marketplace; 2) points of negotiation between mainstream medicine, popular understandings of health, and alternative or complementary practices; 3) the role of science in medical research and practice; 4) the role of institutions in health care delivery; 5) the politics of healing. |
Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; C (Counts for L&S credit), A (Advanced) 4:00-5:15 TR Prerequisites: Junior standing. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 699: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; C (counts for L&S), A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Jr st and cons instr |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 709: Instructor: Judith Leavitt |
|
| Advanced readings in primary and secondary literature concerning public health issues and problems in America from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and efforts made toward their solutions. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate, Advanced Time TBA Prerequisites: Grad st & con reg in Med Hist 509. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 753: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| Advanced readings that examine major problems in modern international health. Focus on epidemiology and disease ecology; political economy of health; migration; quarantine; international health research; cross-cultural healing; mental and maternal health; growth of international health organizations. | Not cross-listed
1 cr.; Graduate basic Time TBA Prerequisites: Grad st and con reg in Med Hist 553. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 890: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr. A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prereq: Open to all 4th yr Med stdts (8 or 16 wks) & Grad stdts of all other depts (16 wks) |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 905: Instructor: Alan Weisbard |
|
| Introduction to the legal, ethical and public policy dimensions of modern medicine and biomedical research. Informed consent, human experimentation, death and dying, organ transplantation, allocation of scarce resources. May cover reproductive and genetic issues in some years. | Meets with law 905
3 cr.; Graduate, advanced 1:20-3;20 TR, 3247 Law. Prerequisite: Consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 919: Instructor: Richard Keller |
|
| This graduate seminar focuses on the historical and contemporary dimensions of disaster and catastrophe in the modern world. It explores the coupling of human and natural systems through a concentration on intersections between natural and human-made hazards and disasters. The course examines such “natural” disasters such as hurricanes, tsunamis, and heat waves, but also industrial catastrophes such as the Bhopal and Chernobyl explosions. The focus is principally on acute rather than chronic disasters and degradation. The seminar provides an introduction to an expanding humanities and social science literature on disaster. Students are required to participate actively in discussions and to produce an original research paper on a related topic. | Crosslisted with History of Science
3 cr.; Graduate, advanced 1:15-3:15 W Prerequisites: Graduate standing and consent of instructor. |
|
Medical History and Bioethics 999: Instructor: Staff |
|
| To be arranged with instructor. | Not cross-listed
1-3 cr.; A (Advanced) Time to be arranged Prerequisites: Grad stdts who have the Masters or equiv, or Postdoc fellows who wish to undertake an independent research project. |