Module description
In a nutshell, this module introduces students to two ways of making sense of public health. The first is by exploring some of the key sites that are central to the making of public health. The second is through acknowledging that whilst public health (and its sidekick, epidemiology, the study of health across populations) sounds like it would be about actually existing people, it is often about people at the aggregate. In other words, statistics. This module takes a different approach: we study the observable behaviour and attitudes of actually existing people—whether in the present or the past.
Each week, we ask: ‘Who are the “public” in “public health”?’ We answer this question through exploring specific places that make up London’s public health infrastructure as well as some of the city’s magnificent archival collections. This module introduces students to some key research methodologies in the social sciences and humanities-doing fieldwork, using archives, and unlocking the mysteries of university libraries in order to enable students to understand and master key concepts in the anthropology, history and social science of life, death and illness as part of the practice of medicine; to familiarize students provide students with key debates in the anthropology, history and social science of life, death and illness; to familiarize students with how medical understandings of life, death and illness have changed over time; to familiarize students with how medical practice and understanding of life, death and illness differ across cultures.
Assessment details
- 1 x 500 Word Essay Proposal & Plan (30%)
- 1 x 2,500 Word Essay (70%)
Educational aims & objectives
- To enable students to understand and master key concepts in the anthropology, history and social science of life, death and illness as part of the practice of medicine
- To familiarize students provide students with key debates in the anthropology, history and social science of life, death and illness
- To familiarize students with how medical understandings of life, death and illness have changed over time
- To familiarize students with how medical practice and understanding of life, death and illness differ across cultures
Learning outcomes
Upon completion of this module, students will be able to:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of key anthropological and historical debates that shape our understandings of the respective relationships between life, death and how medicine mediates both.
- Be able to understand key debates in medicine as shaped by and historically rooted in cultural beliefs and practices
- Engage with key concepts in the field e.g., how diseases, healthcare therapeutics and patients have emerged as historically and culturally contingent
- Developed an understanding of the successive governing principles for modern healthcare in Britain and its empire e.g., colonial expansion, industrialization, urbanization, and new forms of biopolitical subjectivity.
Teaching pattern
One weekly two-hour discussion and activity based class.