About

Course Description

This 3-credit* course is designed to help you make sense of something complex, ever-present, and often taken for granted: the existence of an immense, highly technological medical services delivery system in the United States. You will trace its underlying values and assumptions and how its development was shaped within the current of American history. Disease and health are human universals, but each individual experiences and interprets them through modes of perception, belief, and practices which are historically contingent. In other words, the way that an individual experiences, defines and responds to “health” or “disease” is tightly bound up in historical context. Illuminating that historical context in past times will help you understand its reality in your own lives. You will explore these interconnected dimensions by comparing your own understandings of health, wellness and disease with those of specific people in the American past.

LASC Approved for: WAC and either ICW or TLC. Can be taken for Honors program credit.

Student Learning Outcomes

  • Develop a historically-informed framework for understanding changing perceptions of disease and health
  • Analyze and interpret episodes of historical change in medical, nursing and psychological theories and technologies
  • Break down the complex contemporary American health care system into its constituent parts to understand where, when and how each developed

As you understand how people in the American past defined and responded to disease and illness, your understanding of the US experience will be enriched. You will also understand and apply historical sources and methods, and will begin the process of thinking like historians through focused research, writing and discussion (online and in person). Being able to think like a historian will help you regardless of your major or career plans.

Current Syllabus: click on the link in the left sidebar

Archived Syllabi:
Spring 2017
Spring 2014
Spring 2013
Fall 2010

*By University definition:
Federal regulation defines a credit hour as an amount of work represented in intended learning outcomes and verified by evidence of student achievement that is an institutional established equivalence that reasonably approximates not less than –

(1) One hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours of out of class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks for one semester or trimester hour of credit, or ten to twelve weeks for one quarter hour of credit, or the equivalent amount of work over a different amount of time; or

(2) At least an equivalent amount of work as required in paragraph (1) of this definition for other academic activities as established by the institution including laboratory work, internships, practica, studio work, and other academic work leading to the award of credit hours.