You're home sick from school, watching The Price is Right and slurping chicken soup. Or you're at the nursing home, visiting your ailing grandparent. Or maybe you're on the night shift at a community hospital, checking vital signs and hoping the patient down the hall makes it through the night. It's also possible that you're young and healthy and have never used words like "premium" or "copay" in casual conversation.
Scenes of sickness and health are playing out in our lives and around us every day. In this seminar, we will investigate experiences of health care in American life. Blending historical and contemporary contexts, this interdisciplinary course will draw from the history of medicine, medical sociology, and narrative medicine. We will consider both patient and provider experiences of health and illness. Major themes will include the framing of disease and diagnosis, the doctor-patient relationship, disability rights, the role of technology in shaping health care, and the politics of health. Core texts will draw from histories of disease and health care practice, physician and patient memoirs, graphic novels, news articles, and popular media. Students will complete a series of writing assignments that will include peer review and revision components, with an emphasis on building analytical and argumentation skills.
Scenes of sickness and health are playing out in our lives and around us every day. In this seminar, we will investigate experiences of health care in American life. Blending historical and contemporary contexts, this interdisciplinary course will draw from the history of medicine, medical sociology, and narrative medicine. We will consider both patient and provider experiences of health and illness. Major themes will include the framing of disease and diagnosis, the doctor-patient relationship, disability rights, the role of technology in shaping health care, and the politics of health. Core texts will draw from histories of disease and health care practice, physician and patient memoirs, graphic novels, news articles, and popular media. Students will complete a series of writing assignments that will include peer review and revision components, with an emphasis on building analytical and argumentation skills.
- Instructor of record: Kelly O'Donnell