How do Anthropologists understand and investigate the social and cultural contexts of health and illness? This course will examine the diverse ways in which humans use cultural resources to cope with pain, illness, suffering and healing in diverse cultural contexts. In addition, we will analyze various kinds of medical practices as cultural systems, examining how disease, health, body, and mind are socially constructed, how these constructions articulate with human biology, and vice versa. The course will provide an introduction to the major theoretical frameworks that guide anthropological approaches to studying human health-related behavior. Theory will be combined with case studies from a number of societies, from India, Japan, Brazil, and Haiti to the U.S. and Canada, enabling students to identify similarities across seemingly disparate cultural systems, while at the same time demonstrating the ways in which American health behaviors and practices are socially embedded and culturally specific. The course will emphasize the overall social, political, and economic contexts in which health behavior and health systems are shaped, and within which they must be understood.
Anthro 390-0-23 Methods in Global Hlth and Antho: Turning Y
This class will provide rigorous guidance on how one moves through the scientific process, from articulating scientific questions to answering and presenting them in a way that your audience can really relate to. We will do this using data from a large dataset—the Gallup World Poll. Specific skills to be developed include human subjects training, formal literature review, hypothesis generation, development of analytic plans, performing descriptive statistics, creation of figures and tables, writing up results, scientific poster creation, and oral presentation of results. This course will be a terrific foundation for writing scientific manuscripts, theses, and dissertations.
The racialization of Indigenous polities in North America has been a key mechanism for undermining Indigenous sovereignty and facilitating settler colonialism. In analytically foregrounding Indigenous sovereignty, this course examines how race has been imposed upon Indigenous peoples and nations so settlers could dispossess them of their lands and their political authority over those lands. Through this course, we will consider how US anthropology contributed to the development of the notion of indigeneity-as-race in North America, the function of Indigenous racialization, and how Indigenous communities have grappled with their racialization throughout time and into the present.
"The risk of nuclear war is increasing, from North Korea's nuclear program to Russia's threat to use tactical nuclear weapons in its war with Ukraine. The nuclear arms race is also gaining momentum, as evidenced by China's growing nuclear arsenal and the U.S. "nuclear modernization" program. While the use of nuclear weapons would clearly threaten humanity and the entire planet, the development, maintenance, and possession of nuclear weapons, from uranium mining to nuclear waste disposal, has profound economic and environmental consequences, especially for marginalized populations. This advanced course in the anthropology of peace examines the role of cities - city leaders and city residents - in the politics of nuclear weapons. Cities have often been considered targets for nuclear attack, and in the 1950s, U.S. city residents routinely participated in civil defense drills. Since the 1960s, city leaders and a wide range of citizens have also been active in anti-nuclear activism. The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which entered into force in January 2021, itself the result of global civil society efforts, has reinvigorated grassroots efforts to promote nuclear disarmament. In the U.S., more than 70 municipalities, including Boston, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, have recently passed resolutions urging the federal government to support the TPNW. These resolutions have highlighted the connections between global nuclear security and critical local, national, and regional issues such as racism, gender inequality, economic inequality, environmental crisis, and memories of past violence. This course considers the potential implications of these city-level actions and conversations for national nuclear policy debates.
Anthro 390-0-38 Before Eco-Punks and Cottagecore: The Archaeology
"Whether foraging, farming, or clear cutting, this course explores people's relationships with the natural world. With a heavy emphasis on historical and Indigenous perspectives, students can look forward to surveying alternative perceptions of the environment using archaeological and ecological data. All humans require the environment to survive, but their cultural attitudes and survival methods vary widely. Through case studies, students will learn to recognize a spectrum of human-environmental relationships from what people leave behind. Course content will include lectures, in-class activities, assigned articles, and class discussions. No previous experience in archaeology is required."
This course aims to extend critiques of property through close readings and discussions of foundational and contemporary readings. We especially attend to the workings of demarcation: how lines get drawn on bodies and things in ways that make property possible. Entities ranging from land to airwaves to genes can become property once they are delimited and defined as discrete objects. We will investigate how processes of demarcation produce material objects, such as land, while simultaneously producing specific kinds of (often racialized, gendered, sexual, and classed) subjects, as lines are drawn marking and de-marking material and social boundaries, objects in landscapes, legal interests and ownability, human and more-than-human subjects, and spaces of inhabitation and violence. We further examine the varying frameworks and concepts scholars deploy to address the contemporary decolonial and environmental stakes of property, the wide array of ethnographic contexts for research, and possible ways forward considering current and longstanding challenges.
This course provides students with an in-depth understanding of major developments in architectural, urban, and landscape history, from 1750 to 1890. Charting a period of significant change that animated architectural discourse and practice, students will explore the highly innovative and experimental ways in which key architects and planners responded to the challenges of a rapidly changing and globalizing world and to the possibilities introduced by new technologies and materials. While this course focuses on developments that took place within the European and North American frame, they are situated in relation to global processes including trade, imperialism, nationalism, migration, and industrialization. Each lecture is organized around defining transformations in architectural culture during this period: We will explore how the era of revolutions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries expanded the role of architecture in the creation of new types of public and political space; how industrial production and prefabrication gave rise to radically new architectural vocabularies and catalyzed debates about national styles and aesthetic and environmental "character"; and how new housing, labor, and urban reform movements, such as utopian socialism, offered visionary spatial strategies in pursuit of an elusive social equality. This course prioritizes discussion and critical reflection and emphasizes the study of primary sources.
Techno-Orientalism names a variant of Orientalism that associates Asians with a technological future. This seminar will explore how Techno-Orientalist tropes are used by, played with, and rewritten by Asian American authors. We will study how twentieth-century and contemporary issues of technology, globalization, and financial speculation collide with a history of yellow peril and Asian Invasion discourse, as well as how these tensions manifest in figures and tropes such as robots, aliens, and pandemics. Texts include poetry, novels, short stories, comics, and film.
This course will explore the history of European and Near Eastern astronomy from the 7th century BCE to the 6th century CE. Students will learn the fundamentals of the geocentric model, ancient methods of observation, and traditions of cosmology. We will study the history of time-reckoning and calendar-making, as well as portrayals of astronomy and celestial phenomena in myth and literature. In addition to reading ancient texts, students will also make their own observations using models of ancient instruments and the methods of ancient astronomers.
This class will help students understand the key economic forces that have shaped the US health care and health insurance industry. What role do the particularities of health care and health insurance as economic goods play in explaining the size and growth rate of the health care sector? What's the effect of private incentives, adverse selection, moral hazard, and regulation? What's the effect of different organizational structures of health care provision? What can we learn from comparing the US health care / health insurance system to other countries' systems? Students will learn that these issues are important in the current public policy discussion.
This course examines economic development over the long-run, with a focus on the transition to modern economic growth in the Western world. Topics include Malthusian stagnation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the demographic transition, and globalization and the great divergence. Along the way, we will discuss long-run changes in inequality, technology, and labor force participation, as well as the role of institutions in economic development, and the interaction between economic conditions and political power. Much of the class will be focused around analyzing recent research on these topics. The class will also involve a writing component aimed at improving students' ability to write critically and concisely about economic topics.
The goal of this course is to understand the functioning and regulation of energy markets. The energy sector is a vital input to the economy. It is often highly concentrated, generating concerns about competition, and a big emitter of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, generating concerns about the environment. As a consequence, the energy sector is subject to substantial economic and environmental regulation. We will use economic theory and empirical evidence to analyze the real-world operation of electricity, oil, and natural gas markets. These tools will allow us to critically understand how these markets are regulated. We will examine policies in a range of current topics. For example: Why has the performance of electricity markets been debated? Who pays the bill of carbon regulation? What are the pros and cons of renewable energy policies? What are the prospects for energy efficiency improvements? The course will draw upon material taught in Economics 310-1, 310-2, and 281, with the tools from Econ 310-1 and 281 being absolutely essential.
What are the politics of driving a car? What social choices do we make when we charge our phones? Are there philosophical and historical undertones to productivity vlogs on youtube? Even as these day-to-day acts of consumption might seem unrelated to each other, they are all connected by one critical concept: Energy. This course explores the social, political, and literary valences of energy to unearth the term's numerous and vastly divergent meanings. Over the quarter, we'll read texts ranging from Victorian novels to present day science fiction, tracking different understandings of energy that blur the line between scientific and imaginative ways of thinking. In our class discussions we'll enquire how literary authors use energy as a metaphor to name a variety of social dynamics like race, gender, class, empire, nature, and god. Reading literary texts alongside a social history of science, we'll use short writing tasks and class presentations to ask: how does the science of energy make its way through literature into our imaginations about the world? We will spend time with literary artefacts and study them with the premise that energy is both a force materially vital to life on earth and a vast imaginative resource for the worlds and societies we seek to build. Through a grading contract that rewards your labor and treats your energies as inherently valuable, we will focus on writing process, time management, and improvement over the course of the quarter.
How do we "capture" nonhuman phenomena within literary forms and genres that are designed (mainly) by humans? As an introduction to critical methods in textual studies, our seminar will think about how representation works across species and how it can grasp the relationship between animate creatures and their elemental surroundings. These habitats will range from literal fields, forests, skies, and oceans to the wily conceptual terrain of "Nature" itself. By focusing on human representations of animals and the nonhuman more broadly, this seminar delves into the question of how literary re-presentations of the natural world work - this is both a practical and a philosophical question. To address it, we'll analyze the raw materials and core resources of the written word: close observation and description; perspective, point-of-view, and matters of voice; anthropomorphizing and/or animalizing imagery; and the mind-bendingly disparate frameworks of narrative, human, evolutionary, and planetary time. In return, our readings will also trouble assumptions about how exclusively "human" we humans ever really are when we write.
The field of disability studies grew out of the rights-based activism that led, in the United States, to the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Yet, as disability theorists have observed, "western" literature has long been obsessed with disability as metaphor, character trait, and plot device. This course will serve as an introduction to the application of disability studies in literature. We will explore a range of questions: how do we approach the representation of disability in texts by non-disabled authors? How do we differentiate (or should we?) between disability and chronic illness, or between physical and mental disabilities? Can literary representation operate as activism? How do we parse the gap between disability as metaphor and lived experience? What does literature offer disability studies, and why should disability studies be a core method for studying literature? Readings will be divided between theoretical texts and primary sources. Students will learn to grapple with complex sociocultural and literary analysis, as well as to make space for their own primary source readings.
Our climate is rapidly changing. Rising sea levels and increasing ocean acidity, higher temperatures, more droughts, melting glaciers, wilder weather patterns, and mounting environmental disasters mean that climate change is increasingly visible in our daily lives. What role does human society play in these changes, and what consequences does society suffer as these changes occur? This course is an introduction to environmental sociology during which we will employ an intersectional, sociological perspective to look beyond the scientific basis for environmental problems to understand the social roots of environmental issues. We will cover a variety of topics in environmental sociology, including how actors such as corporations, the media, and social movements impact public opinion and environmental issues. Further, we will critically examine the gendered, racial, and socioeconomic production of disparate environmental risks. A primary, central focus of this sociology course is environmental inequality, and students engage with a wide range of theories to examine environmental issues of their own choosing. This is not a public policy course.
Envr Pol and Culture 337 Hazard, Disaster and Society
This course examines how socioeconomic and environmental factors work together to cause hazards and disasters in human society. In this course we learn the main concepts about disaster such as preparedness, vulnerability, resilience, response, mitigation, etc. We learn that a disaster does not have the same effect on everyone (all groups of people), and factors of social inequality such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, make people more vulnerable to impacts of disasters. Also, this course, with an interdisciplinary perspective, analyzes disasters in the global North and South. This is a discussion-intensive course for advanced undergrad students. The classes are the student-centered with an emphasis on collaborative learning. The class meetings will consist of lecture, discussion, presentations, teamwork, activities, video/audio materials and projects.
Envr Pol and Culture 390-0-23 International Wildlife Law and Policy
Many scientists and policymakers believe that we are on the cusp of the world's sixth great extinction spasm, driven almost entirely by anthropogenic factors, including habitat destruction, unsustainable trade, the introduction of invasive species, and the looming specter of climate change. This course explores the role of international law in addressing the biodiversity crisis and efforts to protect wildlife species. An ancillary objective is to provide students with a foundation in international law, including skills in analyzing treaty provisions.
Envr Pol and Culture 390-0-24 Climate Geoengineering
Climate change is the keystone environmental issue of this generation, and most likely for many generations to come. While the world community and individual countries have formulated policies to address climate change, these policies are almost universally recognized as being wholly inadequate to effectuate the objective of the Paris Agreement to hold global temperatures to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit increases to 1.5ºC. Indeed, it has become increasingly obvious that achievement of Paris temperature objectives will require both aggressive emission reduction initiatives and large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal/negative emissions technologies and processes (CDR), sometimes also referred to as a major sub-category of climate geoengineering. Moreover, many believe that we will also need to deploy solar radiation management approaches, which seek to reduce the amount of incoming solar radiation, to buy us time as we decarbonize the world economy.
This course introduces students to pressing disease and health care problems worldwide and examines efforts currently underway to address them. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the course identifies the main actors, institutions, practices and forms of knowledge production characteristic of what we call "global health" today, and explores the environmental, social, political and economic factors that shape patterns and experiences of illness and healthcare across societies. We will scrutinize the value systems that underpin specific paradigms in the policy and science of global health and place present-day developments in historical perspective. We will focus on social determinants of health, settler colonialism, colonialism, health and human rights, global health ethics, ecological determinants of health, and an overview of public health disciplines.
Gbl Hlth 221-0-1 Beyond Porn: Sexuality, Health and Pleasure
Threesomes. Squirting. Vibrators. Butt plugs. Multiple orgasms. You may have seen them in pornography, but have you ever wanted to study and talk about sex, and specifically, how to have a satisfying sex life? Many people look to pornography not just for entertainment, but also for education about what satisfying sexual encounters look like. Unfortunately, much of what people learn from pornography doesn't lead them to healthy and satisfying sexual encounters and relationships. This lecture class isn't actually about pornography. It goes beyond many presumptions about sex and pleasure depicted in pornography, the media, and popular culture, in order to equip students with information that can lead to more satisfying and healthy sexual experiences across their lifespan, regardless of how they identify, or who or what they like. The course also familiarizes students with a wide spectrum of human identities, practices, and attitudes towards sex and sexuality. The course includes lectures from guest speakers with particular expertise or experience in topics covered. Possible topics covered include: physiological and biological sex; gender; sexual orientation; homophobia and heterosexism; navigating sexual risks in a sex-positive way; sexual health disparities; sexual desire, arousal, and response; solitary sex & sex with others; sex toys; unconventional sexual practices; intimacy and effective communication; sexuality & aging; sexuality, disability & intimacy; sexual problems and solutions; sexual harassment and violence; selling sex; and hallmarks of great relationships; race, gender & sexuality, and yes, dotted through the quarter are some references to pornography.
Gbl Hlth 222-0-2 The Social Determinants of Health
The human body is embedded into a health framework that can produce hypervisibility, invisibility, or both. This upper-level course examines the role of social markers of difference, including race, class, gender, sexuality, age, and religion, in current debates and challenges in the theory and practice of global health. We will explore recent illness experiences, therapeutic and self-care interventions, and health practices and behaviors in socio-cultural and historical context through case studies in the U.S., Brazil, and South Africa. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to key concepts such as embodiment, medicalization, structural violence, social determinants of health, biopolitics, health equity, and an ethic of care. Central questions of the course include: How do categories of "Othering" determine disease and health in individuals and collectives? How is medical science and care influenced by economic and political institutions, and by patient trust? How do social and economic inclusion/exclusion control access to health treatment, self-care, and care of loved ones This course focuses on the linkages between society and health inequalities in the U.S., U.S. territories, Brazil, and Africa. It offers a forum to explore how social standings (mis)inform policies. This course utilizes historical accounts, contemporary ethnographies, Twitter threads of health experiences, public health literature, media reports, TedTalks, and films to bring to life the "why's" of health differences.
Global health is a popular field of work and study for Americans, with an increasing number of medical trainees and practitioners, as well as people without medical training, going abroad to volunteer in areas where there are few health care practitioners or resources. In addition, college undergraduates, as well as medical trainees and practitioners, are going abroad in increasing numbers to conduct research in areas with few healthcare resources. But all of these endeavors, though often entered into with the best of intentions, are beset with ethical questions, concerns, and dilemmas, and can have unintended consequences. In this course, students will explore and consider these ethical challenges. In so doing, students will examine core global bioethical concerns - such as structural violence - and core global bioethical codes, guidelines, and principals - such as beneficence and solidarity - so they will be able to ethically assess global health practices in a way that places an emphasis on the central goal of global health: reducing health inequities. With an emphasis on the ethical responsibility to reduce inequities, we consider some of the most pressing global bioethical issues of our time: equity, fairness, and planetary health. Particular attention is given to the ethics of research during a pandemic and equitable access to vaccines and therapies for Covid-19.
Gbl Hlth 320-0-20 Qualitative Research Methods in Global Health
This course is designed to provide global health students with the tools they will need in order to design, revise, conduct, and write up current and future qualitative research projects relating to global health topics. This course is experientially driven, allowing students opportunities to actually "do" research, while providing careful mentoring and engaging in in-depth discussions about ethical and methodological issues associated with qualitative approaches and with working with living humans. Students will learn methods such as: writing research proposals, research ethics, writing ethnographic field notes, doing qualitative interviews and focus groups, analyzing and writing up data.
This course draws on perspectives from anthropology and related social scientific fields to provide a comparative overview of the impact of armed conflict on public health and health care systems worldwide. Drawing primarily on examples from recent history, including conflicts in the Balkans, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East, we will explore warfare as a crucial sociopolitical determinant of global health disparities and consider organized efforts to respond to the health impacts of mass violence. Key topics that we will consider include variations in the relationship between warfare and public health across eras and cultures; the health and mental health impacts of forced displacement, military violence, and gender-based violence; and the roles of medical humanitarianism and humanitarian psychiatry in postwar recovery processes. Through close readings of classic and contemporary social theory, ethnographic accounts, and diverse research on war, health, and postwar humanitarian interventions, this course will encourage you to build your own critical perspective on war and public health anchored in history and the complexities of real-world situations.
This course examines how socioeconomic and environmental factors work together to cause hazards and disasters in human society. In this course we learn the main concepts about disaster such as preparedness, vulnerability, resilience, response, mitigation, etc. We learn that a disaster does not have the same effect on everyone (all groups of people), and factors of social inequality such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, make people more vulnerable to impacts of disasters. Also, this course, with an interdisciplinary perspective, analyzes disasters in the global North and South. This is a discussion-intensive course for advanced undergrad students. The classes are the student-centered with an emphasis on collaborative learning. The class meetings will consist of lecture, discussion, presentations, teamwork, activities, video/audio materials and projects.
The characteristics of a good recipe are said to have a list of the ingredients, the amounts needed, and the directions for mixing the ingredients. However, outside of food-based ingredients, there are also social elements that contribute to a good recipe. Food is something that outside of the social constructs of race, phobias, and isms, that can bind us all together. This interdisciplinary course focuses on defining togetherness, belongingness, and the end goal of a recipe— eating. Through the lens of recipes, meal-making, social stigmas, nutrition, and health students will explore how cultural culinary practices have become evidence for illnesses, diseases, and death for certain bodies. Course readings, videos, dialogue, and recipe analyses will provide a critical lens for students to delve into the multifaceted dimensions of culinary practices, their impact on individuals and communities, and how some practices have been sifted through and out.
Gbl Hlth 390-0-32 Global Circulations and Human Health: Migrations
Human beings and human products are on the move across the globe, shaped by inequities that drive poor health outcomes for many involved in these flows even as these movements should, ideally, provide benefits for most. More people are being forced from their homes than ever before in history; more and more are being turned away as they seek resettlement. Global economic migration is poorly regulated and rife with exploitation. Cadaver procuration relies largely on the dying destitute and marginalized. The flow of human organs for transplantation increasingly moves from the poor in the Global South to the rich in the Global North. Altruistic donations of cord blood enrich private cord banks. Even the production of human babies through international surrogacy is driven by economic inequities. We will situate the movement of human beings and human parts as both a historical and a contemporary phenomenon, focusing on concepts such as equity, commodification, beneficence, human dignity, and common good. We will examine the role of advocacy, law, politics and ethics in preserving dignity and health as human beings and human parts increasingly circulate across international boundaries.
When I was an undergraduate student my "To Be Read" list was always really long and often forgotten. As I have re-established my love of reading for fun I see how literary genres influence and challenge our understanding of well-being/health. Fiction, non-fiction, poems, memoirs, novels, young adult fiction, science fiction, mysteries, fantasy, fairy tales, horror, magical realism, and so many other genres influence our definitions of health or wellbeing. They provide insight into how other folks imagine and understanding situations we may or may not find ourselves in. Our course will consider some of these and other genres noted above. The best text allow us to empathize with the characters or challenge what we thought we knew. We will read one book as a class. In addition, you'll be asked to individually select a book to read/listen to, a list of various text will also be provided if you need guidance in choosing a text. You will learn how these materials influence or challenge norms about health and well-being. Professor Reyes will help you access books that aren't easily available or affordable.
This class will provide rigorous guidance on how one moves through the scientific process, from articulating scientific questions to answering and presenting them in a way that your audience can really relate to. We will do this using data from a large dataset—the Gallup World Poll. Specific skills to be developed include human subjects training, formal literature review, hypothesis generation, development of analytic plans, performing descriptive statistics, creation of figures and tables, writing up results, scientific poster creation, and oral presentation of results. This course will be a terrific foundation for writing scientific manuscripts, theses, and dissertations.
German 250-0-20 Cultural History of Beer and Brewing from Germany to Chicago
This course will provide an overview of many different historical and practical aspects of beer and brewing in German-speaking culture while also including the rich history of German beer making in Chicago from the 1850s to today. Beyond the history and science of beer in Germany, we will read fictional and philosophical interpretations of beer and its cultural impact, from Martin Luther's advocation of drinking and the importance of alcohol in E.T.A. Hoffmann's work, to Friedrich Nietzsche's comparison of beer to Christianity. Local experts will be invited to speak to the class, and we will learn about the science of brewing by focusing on the different beer styles and brewing techniques used by German brew-masters and tavern owners from the Middle Ages to the present day. A beer tasting of non-alcoholic malted beverages will be included as part of the curriculum, as well as a tour of a local Chicago brewery.
Gndr St 221-0-1 Beyond Porn: Sexuality, Health and Pleasure
Threesomes. Squirting. Vibrators. Butt plugs. Multiple orgasms. You may have seen them in pornography, but have you ever wanted to study and talk about sex, and specifically, how to have a satisfying sex life? Many people look to pornography not just for entertainment, but also for education about what satisfying sexual encounters look like. Unfortunately, much of what people learn from pornography doesn't lead them to healthy and satisfying sexual encounters and relationships. This lecture class isn't actually about pornography. It goes beyond many presumptions about sex and pleasure depicted in pornography, the media, and popular culture, in order to equip students with information that can lead to more satisfying and healthy sexual experiences across their lifespan, regardless of how they identify, or who or what they like. The course also familiarizes students with a wide spectrum of human identities, practices, and attitudes towards sex and sexuality. The course includes lectures from guest speakers with particular expertise or experience in topics covered. Possible topics covered include: physiological and biological sex; gender; sexual orientation; homophobia and heterosexism; navigating sexual risks in a sex-positive way; sexual health disparities; sexual desire, arousal, and response; solitary sex & sex with others; sex toys; unconventional sexual practices; intimacy and effective communication; sexuality & aging; sexuality, disability & intimacy; sexual problems and solutions; sexual harassment and violence; selling sex; and hallmarks of great relationships; race, gender & sexuality, and yes, dotted through the quarter are some references to pornography.
From abstinence-only sex education programs to the public response to songs like WAP by Cardi B & Megan thee Stallion, we are bombarded with messaging that sexuality is stigmatized. But why is sexuality so taboo? How do social forces shape the way we view, experience, and regulate sexuality? Using a sociological lens, this course explores the intersection of sexuality and stigma. We will begin by exploring foundational theories of both stigma and sexuality in the social sciences. Armed with these frameworks, we will then engage with in-depth case studies of different stigmatized sexualities, including homosexuality & bisexuality, asexuality, HIV/AIDS, infidelity, sex work, kink, ethical non-monogamy, and disabled sexualities. The course will empower students to interrogate their own assumptions and to critically examine the forces that perpetuate sexual inequality in society. By the end of the course, students will have gained a deeper understanding of how stigma operates at both the individual and structural level. The final assignment requires students to write a proposal for a research project that would answer a sociological question of their choice about stigma and sexuality.
In this course, we will examine how the Western medical system and accompanying health practices impact people of different genders, as well as how healthcare as an institution and practice produces gender categories. Using interdisciplinary research with a focus on sociological studies, we will interrogate the social, institutional, and biological links between gender and health. We will discuss health inequalities between women, men, and trans* people from different race, ethnic, and class backgrounds, using sociological research to understand why these inequalities and forms of difference emerge and are sustained. We will explore how modern Western medicine views male and female bodies and defines their health and illnesses accordingly. Students will complete two short research projects over the term in which they use different data sources (interviews and media content) to examine gendered perceptions of health, health behaviors, help-seeking behaviors, and experiences with medical institutions.
Gndr St 332-0-21 Reproductive Health, Justice, Politics
As feminist scholar Michelle Murphy points out, "reproduction is not self-evidently a capacity located in sexed bodies"; it is instead a site (or formation) that joins, "cells, protocols, bodies, nations, capital, economics, freedom, and affect as much as sex and women into its sprawl." Thus, she reminds us, "how we constitute reproduction shapes how it can be imagined, altered and politicized." In this seminar we will explore the changing contours of "reproductive politics" from the 1960s to the present (or from the period immediately pre-Roe v Wade through the recent 2022 decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization) through an in-depth investigation of a range of projects and organizations that conceptually reimagine what we mean by "reproduction," the scope and content of "reproductive politics," and the kinds of demands that can be made in the name of reproductive health, rights, freedom and justice.
Gndr St 374-0-20 Imagining the Internet: Fiction, Flim and Theory
Much recent fiction, film and theory are concerned with representing the internet and the World Wide Web. Sometimes cyberspace is depicted as a continuation of previous media such as television, cinema or telephone, but often it is envisioned as a new frontier. This course will examine the ways in which virtual media appears in cultural discourses. We consider how technological objects and tools participate in shaping elements of our culture that may appear natural, logical, or timeless. We will look examine films predicting the internet, cyberpunk fiction predating the www, and early websites from many sources. In addition, this quarter we will consider various generative AI programs, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. Our guiding questions will include the following: In what ways are these narratives shaping collective perceptions of the internet? How have virtual technologies challenged experiences of language, gender, community and identity? Following a Cultural Studies model for inquiry, this course will be project-based and experiential. Your attendance and participation are mandatory. No experience needed, only a willingness to take risks and share work.
History 300-0-20 Thinking Machines: The History and Ethics of AI
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is not new. Long before the term was coined in 1955, engineers and inventors sought to mechanize human thought and behavior. This course will address and contextualize the chronological arc of AI, from eighteenth-century automatons to today's large language models. Together, we will investigate how changing conceptions of human intelligence and creativity influenced the development and implementation of what we now call AI. In so doing, we will familiarize ourselves with changing strategies for creating "intelligent" machines and engage in lively debates over the problems and possibilities of machine sentience. Will this course secure you a six-figure salary working for OpenAI? Sadly, no. It will, however, enrich your knowledge of the historical trajectory, evolving ethics, and critical concepts of AI.
This course examines the history of cannabis in a global perspective to understand how and why a plant that has been crucial to most civilizations for thousands of years became one of the most consumed intoxicants in human history, and one of the most demonized, criminalized, controversial and profitable commodities of the modern world. We consider archeological evidence to explore the earliest uses and meanings of the plant in antiquity and how it spread from Central Asia to the rest of the planet. We also examine various types of historical works to comprehend what roles cannabis played in the rise of maritime empires and the formation of a global capitalist world. Then, we revisit some of the urban and rural cultures in various parts of the world that modernized the plant's uses and meanings in the 20th century. We also study scientific, legal, and pop-culture materials to elucidate what was at stake in the most heated controversies and campaigns against and in favor of the plant. We conclude analyzing the most recent debates and policies on decriminalization and legalization in North and South America in a comparative perspective, and their socio-economic, political, and environmental implications. We address these topics reading history, anthropology, sociology, political science, and journalism; and watching and analyzing critically songs, advertisement, literature, feature films, and documentary movies.
History 300-0-28 Histories of Medicine Across Asia
How have people understood the body across Asia? This course explores different conceptions of the body, illness, and therapeutics across several medical traditions in Asia, from the ancient and medieval periods up to the present day. We will study primary sources like medical diagrams, the biographies of physicians, and case notes about patients to understand the roles of medical practitioners in a range of contexts. We will explore traditions like Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Galenic medicine, and Tibetan medicine. These traditions were always dynamic, but they also changed dramatically in the modern period, as biomedicine became one of the many medical traditions of Asia.
History 352-0-20 A Global History of Death and Dying
How death shapes the modern world via slave trades, imperial conquests, pandemics, wars, medicine, and genocide. Transformations in rituals; personal and social meanings of death; ways and patterns of dying.
History 395-0-24 Energy and Environments: A Global History
Today's strong focus on decarbonization and renewable energy stems from reflections on how modern society has consumed large amounts of petroleum, resulting in global problems such as climate change. This has many precedents in human history, as, in many instances, people have viewed energy transitions as solutions to the environmental problems they faced. The class will examine the inseparable relationship between energy sources—human labor, biofuel, coal, electricity, oil, natural gas, nuclear power, and renewable energy—and the environmental concerns of the periods when these sources entered and dominated human societies. When a new energy source is introduced to a community, advocates often present it as a solution to existing environmental issues. However, throughout the entire cycle of energy production and consumption, many energy sources negatively impact both the environment and people. When a new energy source enters society, whose environment does it claim to protect? Who is marginalized by energy transitions?
Humanities 260-0-22 The Matter and Metaphor of Energy
What are the politics of driving a car? What social choices do we make when we charge our phones? Are there philosophical and historical undertones to productivity vlogs on youtube? Even as these day-to-day acts of consumption might seem unrelated to each other, they are all connected by one critical concept: Energy. This course explores the social, political, and literary valences of energy to unearth the term's numerous and vastly divergent meanings. Over the quarter, we'll read texts ranging from Victorian novels to present day science fiction, tracking different understandings of energy that blur the line between scientific and imaginative ways of thinking. In our class discussions we'll enquire how literary authors use energy as a metaphor to name a variety of social dynamics like race, gender, class, empire, nature, and god. Reading literary texts alongside a social history of science, we'll use short writing tasks and class presentations to ask: how does the science of energy make its way through literature into our imaginations about the world? We will spend time with literary artefacts and study them with the premise that energy is both a force materially vital to life on earth and a vast imaginative resource for the worlds and societies we seek to build. Through a grading contract that rewards your labor and treats your energies as inherently valuable, we will focus on writing process, time management, and improvement over the course of the quarter.
Humanities 370-6-25 Digital Performances and the Era of Virality
In this project-based course we will investigate the relationship between performance and digital technology as "historians of the present." Drawing from a compendium of pandemic performances that are part of an in-progress archive, we will analyze, interpret, and critique digitally mediated performances such as vaxxies, mental health TikTok videos, Zoom plays, and social media participatory projects that emerged during recent times of social isolation and unrest. Key course questions include: What can we learn from the aesthetic and communicative strategies that these digital performances animated, linking personal experience and social engagement? In what ways do these performances connect with and might help us navigate today's context of (dis)information overload, polarization, and affective volatility? How have these performances critically expanded the field of digital performance studies, redefining what liveness is and does? Students will read scholarship on liveness and digital mediation, analyze networked performances of their choosing, and produce critical essays or curated performance collections using multimodal publishing platforms. By the end of the course, students will be able to critically analyze and assess digital artistic and social performances and apply digital literacy skills learned in hands-on sessions to present their research findings.
McCormick - Biomed Eng 380-0-1 Medical Devices, Disease and Global Health
An examination of the intersection of technology and the delivery of health care in resource-poor environments, especially in Africa. Engineering and the application of technologies are important in delivery of health care. This is true in the developing world as well as in the developed world, however health care technologies often fail to work as intended when solutions from wealthy countries are used in poor countries. Differences in burden of disease, infrastructure, economic and social structures are examined in the context of developing practical ways to improve health in specific parts of the developing world. Students work with the instructor to develop ideas a term paper examining a particular intervention. The global burden of disease.
This course offers a deeper examination of a rapidly growing topic in environmental ethics and politics: environmental (in)justice. Together, we will critically reflect upon the questions that have shaped the contemporary discourse on environmental (in)justice. Some of the key questions that will be considered include: Is environmental injustice best understood through the lens of distributive justice alone, or must we take into account procedural justice as well? How does environmental justice relate to the values and ideals of other, more traditional forms of environmentalism? What, in turn, is its relationship—if any—to racism and other social justice issues, such as sexism and ableism? Moreover, what constitutes an environmental burden or benefit, and what is the appropriate standard for assessing ‘environmental risks' or forms of ‘exposure'? In the final section of the course, we will also reflect on how disagreement between stakeholders' moral and cultural standpoints complicates both the recognition and reparation of environmental injustices.
Poli Sci 390-0-23 Climate Change and Collective Action
What gets in the way of collective action on climate change? This course examines the problem of climate change from a collective action perspective, starting by learning what political science says about collective action problems, identifying political and institutional obstacles in the case of climate change, and evaluating tools and avenues that have led to collective action on climate and in other domains.
Poli Sci 390-0-24 Health, Chronic Illness and Disability Politics
Health is simultaneously one of our most basic needs and one of our most commodified goods. We race for cures, rally for affordable and accessible healthcare, debate the ethics of various treatments, and pass laws meant to keep our public healthy. But what do we mean when we talk about "health" or what constitutes a "disease"? How do we define disability, and for what purpose? Who is served by "health politics"? This course examines chronic illnesses and disability (CID) among adults, focusing on the medical and psychosocial aspects of various mental and physical health conditions with implications for political domains of functioning. The primary aim of this course is to offer students an opportunity to explore the continuum of chronic illness and disability (CID) within adulthood through a political science lens. CID will be addressed by studying theoretical underpinnings drawing from medical, psychosocial, and political schemas and examining how these dimensions of understanding interact at the level of the individual, the family, the community, and the society-at-large.
Digital media and technologies, often considered liberation technology, have increasingly been employed by governments and non-political entities for political propaganda and repression. This course will examine the practices and implications of propaganda and repression within the digital media landscape. We will explore the role of digital media and technologies in authoritarian regimes, the common strategies and applications of digital propaganda and repression, and consider how various actors implement these tactics, along with their consequences and global impacts. Through course readings, in-class discussions, and student-led projects, students will develop a critical understanding of the interplay between digital media, politics, and civil society.
Poli Sci 390-0-30 International Wildlife Law and Policy
Many scientists and policymakers believe that we are on the cusp of the world's sixth great extinction spasm, driven almost entirely by anthropogenic factors, including habitat destruction, unsustainable trade, the introduction of invasive species, and the looming specter of climate change. This course explores the role of international law in addressing the biodiversity crisis and efforts to protect wildlife species. An ancillary objective is to provide students with a foundation in international law, including skills in analyzing treaty provisions.
Poli Sci 390-0-31 Counter Intelligence for Civil Society
This course is an intensive examination of the evolving terrain of global digital electronic telecommunications through the lens of the research of the Citizen Lab. For over 20 years, the Citizen Lab -- an interdisciplinary research laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto (which the instructor founded and currently directs) -- has investigated issues at the intersection of information and communication technologies, human rights, and global security. We use a "mixed methods" approach to research combining practices from political science, law, computer science, engineering, and area studies. We see ourselves as a kind of "early warning system," looking over the horizon, or peering beneath the covers of the technological systems that surround us, to expose abuses of power, violations of human rights, or other threats to privacy and security. The Citizen Lab is a pioneer in a new and growing field of "digital accountability" research. After setting the stage with some general readings on background and context, we turn to several modules organized as detailed examinations of the Citizen Lab's mixed methods research on information controls, including analyzing Internet and social media censorship and surveillance, investigating targeted digital espionage, and analyzing the harms and consequences of growing digital transnational repression. We conclude with an exploration of threat modeling and how each of you can improve your own digital hygiene.
Sch of Comm St - Comm 246-0-1 Intro to Heath Communcation
People who understand communication are uniquely positioned to solve health related problems, and their services are increasingly in demand. As such, this course is designed to familiarize you with the theory and research on communication in health and illness contexts, focusing on how messages from interpersonal, organizational, cultural, and media sources affect health beliefs and behaviors. We will explore communication in health care delivery, healthcare organizations, as well as health promotion and disease prevention. By taking this course, you will become a more mindful, educated, and effective health communicator.
What is effective risk communication? If last few years has taught us anything, it is the need for effective risk communication. Readings and lectures will examine discoveries in social psychology and communication that inform our understanding of how people interpret risk information and make decisions. Through discussions, in-class activities, and student-led projects, students will explore the creation and evaluation of effective risk messages. Special emphasis will be given to the context of health and the environment.
Sch of Comm St - Comm 378-0-1 Online Communities and Crowds
Examination of the types of collaborations that occur in online communities and crowds. Emphasis on sociological, economic, and political analysis of how and why largescale online collaborations work
Sch of Comm St - Comm 395-0-25 Generative AI and The Media
Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 generative AI has proliferated throughout society, capturing the imagination of the public with its potential to upend much of how people create and consume media and information. In this course we'll demystify this new technology, understand how it works, how to control it through prompting, and how to implement it in various use cases found in media production and communication. We'll also step back with a critical eye to ask questions of how generative AI changes the larger media system and raises ethical and governance issues around data, copyright, privacy, bias, and more.
Sch of Comm St - Comm 395-0-26 Digital Propaganda and Repression
Digital media and technologies, often considered as liberation technology, have increasingly been employed by governments and non-political entities for political propaganda and repression. This course will examine the practices and implications of propaganda and repression within the digital media landscape. We will explore the role of digital media and technologies in authoritarian regimes, the common strategies and applications of digital propaganda and repression, and consider how various actors implement these tactics, along with their consequences and global impacts. Through course readings, in-class discussions, and student-led projects, students will develop a critical understanding of the interplay between digital media, politics, and civil society.
Sch of Comm St - Perf St 330-0-1 Digital Performance in the Era of Virality
In this project-based course we will investigate the relationship between performance and digital technology as "historians of the present." Drawing from a compendium of pandemic performances that are part of an in-progress archive, we will analyze, interpret, and critique digitally mediated performances such as vaxxies, mental health TikTok videos, Zoom plays, and social media participatory projects that emerged during recent times of social isolation and unrest. Key course questions include: What can we learn from the aesthetic and communicative strategies that these digital performances animated, linking personal experience and social engagement? In what ways do these performances connect with and might help us navigate today's context of (dis)information overload, polarization, and affective volatility? How have these performances critically expanded the field of digital performance studies, redefining what liveness is and does? Students will read scholarship on liveness and digital mediation, analyze networked performances of their choosing, and produce critical essays or curated performance collections using multimodal publishing platforms. By the end of the course, students will be able to critically analyze and assess digital artistic and social performances and apply digital literacy skills learned in hands-on sessions to present their research findings.
Our climate is rapidly changing. Rising sea levels and increasing ocean acidity, higher temperatures, more droughts, melting glaciers, wilder weather patterns, and mounting environmental disasters mean that climate change is increasingly visible in our daily lives. What role does human society play in these changes, and what consequences does society suffer as these changes occur? This course is an introduction to environmental sociology during which we will employ an intersectional, sociological perspective to look beyond the scientific basis for environmental problems to understand the social roots of environmental issues. We will cover a variety of topics in environmental sociology, including how actors such as corporations, the media, and social movements impact public opinion and environmental issues. Further, we will critically examine the gendered, racial, and socioeconomic production of disparate environmental risks. A primary, central focus of this sociology course is environmental inequality, and students engage with a wide range of theories to examine environmental issues of their own choosing. This is not a public policy course.
Discussions of "the economy" often seem distant and technical. But economic activity can also be viewed like any other social activity: behavior that is structured by norms, institutions, and relationships. Economic Sociology presents this perspective. The course discusses sociology's main insights about the economy and how they contrast with perspectives from economics and psychology. Among other topics, we will discuss money's functions in intimate ties, changing norms around financial management, the relationship between money, gender, and race, and how this all relates to aggregate trends of inequality.
In this course, we will examine how the Western medical system and accompanying health practices impact people of different genders, as well as how healthcare as an institution and practice produces gender categories. Using interdisciplinary research with a focus on sociological studies, we will interrogate the social, institutional, and biological links between gender and health. We will discuss health inequalities between women, men, and trans* people from different race, ethnic, and class backgrounds, using sociological research to understand why these inequalities and forms of difference emerge and are sustained. We will explore how modern Western medicine views male and female bodies and defines their health and illnesses accordingly. Students will complete two short research projects over the term in which they use different data sources (interviews and media content) to examine gendered perceptions of health, health behaviors, help-seeking behaviors, and experiences with medical institutions.
Why, in moments of crisis, do some people distrust scientific experts while others embrace them? This course will begin to answer this question in three steps: First, we will unpack the tools that experts use to assert their authority and produce a binding perception of reality. Then, we will consider the way that social movements—including "citizen scientists," HIV/AIDS activists, and "biohackers"—contest, mistrust, or reaffirm experts' authority. Finally, we will study how these disputes are shaped by regulatory bureaucracies and the legal system. Throughout the course, students will apply concepts from the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies (STS) to current "crises" that hinge on scientific expertise like climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the rise of artificial intelligence.
