Instructor: David Boyd, PhD
This course explores the way that medicine shapes our understanding of health and the body in contemporary American society. Focusing on medicine as both science and social phenomenon, we will investigate several interrelated questions: How does medicine classify the body as sick or healthy? How, conversely, do individual and collective experiences of health and disease influence medical theory and practice? How does medicine affect the way we interact with both sick and healthy bodies (including our own)? And how do social and cultural factors influence medicine’s potential impact on health and the body?
MHS 201: Fundamental Issues in Medicine, Health, and Society
Instructor: David Boyd
A multidisciplinary introduction to the study of medicine, health, and society, drawing on the perspectives of anthropology, economics, history, literature, political science and policy studies, philosophy, religious studies, and sociology. Guest lectures by representatives of the various disciplines.
MHS 202: Perspectives on Public Health
Instructor: David Boyd, PhD
Drawing on experts from across the university, the course will provide an interdisciplinary introduction to some major public health issues in domestic and global contexts. The course will focus in particular on developing critical thinking about the role, nature, and function of public health in the era of globalization.
MHS 205: Literature and Medicine
Instructor: Marian McBay, PhD
Examines the role of narrative in medicine, health, and healing. Readings and discussions will focus on what insights literature and the creative arts can bring to our understanding of medicine, bioethics, and the human condition. Areas to be covered include: doctor-patient relationship; metaphors of illness; stigmatization and suffering; individuals and communities in global contexts; epidemics; and medical experimentation.
MHS 220: Narrative Medicine: Stories of Illness and the Doctor-Patient Relationship
Instructor: Scott Pearson, M.D. (Division of Surgical Oncology)
As the field of medicine becomes increasingly technology driven and information rich, doctors are finding it harder to listen to and respond to their patients. As a result, patients feel less understood and have begun to devalue the clinical experience. In response to this dilemma, medical schools are beginning to train students in the field of literature in programs known as Narrative Medicine. The premise of such an approach is that through close attention to patients’ stories, physicians will learn to appreciate the experiences of their patients. In this course, we will dissect the doctor-patient relationship as illustrated by illness narratives and other literary works.
MHS 225: Death and Dying in Cultural Context
Instructor: David Boyd, PhD
Explores cultural approaches to understanding death and dying, including religious and ethnic variations, and their impact on American society and health care. The course will also explore in detail the “American” way of death, dying, burial, and bereavement.
MHS 290: Community Health Research
Instructor: Barbara Clinton
Students will design or implement strategies to address community health needs. Working with community mentors, the students will identify unmet community health needs, learn how non-profit organizations address these needs, and provide tools and solutions to enhance community health. Requires instructor approval. Application.
MHS 290: Controversies in Modern Medicine
Instructor: Frank Boehm, MD
Deals with political, ethical and medical issues that have caused considerable debate in our country. Issues such as the medically uninsured, patient safety, minority disparity outcome, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, medical malpractice and nursing shortages are just a few of the controversies that will be discussed and debated.
MHS 290: Early Medicine and Culture: Aristotle to the Enlightenment
Instructor: Holly Tucker, PhD
This course will count as a core for students who have not yet taken History 280 (Modern Medicine) or History 282 (Chinese Medicine), and as an elective for those who have. Bloodletting, dissection, and surgery before anesthesia and antisepsis: What were the major questions surrounding health, healing and the human body from the Greeks to the late eighteenth century? Topics to include anatomy, physiology, childbirth and embryology, pharmacology, surgery, blood transfusion, and other healing practices in their cultural contexts.
MHS 290: Ethics and Public Health
Instructor: Elizabeth Heitman, PhD
This course is a systematic overview of the major ethical issues in public health practice and policy. It examines the history and ethical commitments of public health and specific ethical problems in epidemiology and the definition of health problems, health promotion and disease prevention, occupational health, risk assessment and environmental hazards, research with human beings, and health disparities. No previous courses in ethics required.
MHS 290: HIV/AIDS in the Global Community
Instructor: JuLeigh Petty
Explores the medical, cultural, social, political, economic, and public policy dimensions of HIV/AIDS on a global level. It focuses upon HIV prevention and treatment strategies, social stigma and discrimination and the influence of HIV/AIDS on other aspects of society and culture.
MHS 290: Medicine and Society in East Africa
Instructor: Greg Barz, PhD
Students will have the opportunity to intern at clinics, AIDS hospices, orphanages, hospitals, and schools, learning about the affects of HIV/AIDS on life in an African city. Students chosen for this program are required to take MHS 290: Health and Society in East Africa, in the spring semester followed by an intense experiential learning component in Africa during Maymester. Requires instructor approval.
MHS 290: The Responsible Conduct of Research
Instructor: Elizabeth Heitman, PhD
Provides students with a framework to identify and analyze the ethical challenges of the biomedical sciences, and a basic understanding of the regulations, policies, and professional ethical standards that govern contemporary scientific research. No prior work in ethics is necessary. The course offers a systematic overview of the ethical concepts and traditions on which our understanding of scientific integrity and the responsible conduct of research is based.
MHS 290: Risks and Responsibilities in Caring for Vulnerable Populations
Instructor: Carol Etherington, M.S.N.
An interdisciplinary approach to the care of vulnerable populations with an emphasis on the evolvement of humanitarian aid and the risks and responsibilities in providing it. Students will examine geopolitical, cultural, clinical and practical factors that impact high risk groups of people and that shape the scope and type of assessments and interventions offered during chronic and acute crises of war, civil conflict and disaster.
MHS 295: Epidemics and Society
Instructor: JuLeigh Petty
Research seminar: Explores how diseases and societies interact to produce epidemics. Examines historical cases of epidemics using a combination of biological information and social analysis.
MHS 295: Medicine, Religion, and Spirituality
Instructor: Marian McBay, PhD
Research seminar: Explores the relationship between medicine and religion, and how that relationship affects individuals, families and communities as they deal with such life events as birth, serious illness, injury, disability, epidemics, war and death. Sources include fiction, poetry, drama, film, and medical texts. Meeting time: W, 3:10-5:00
