Current Course Offerings
FALL 2012
Undergraduate Courses
HSHM 007a/HUMS 076a, Epidemics in Global Perspective. William Summers
Interaction of epidemic diseases and society. The response of government, medicine, and the public to the threat or actual presence of widespread contagious diseases. The notion of major epidemics as one of the key contingencies of history, critically examined through contemporary medical, political, and literary accounts. The changing responses of societies and governments to epidemics as well as the reasons for those responses. MW 2:30-3:45
HSHM 204a/AMST 163a/EVST 120a/HIST 120a, Introduction to Environmental History. Paul Sabin
Ways in which people have shaped and been shaped by the changing environments of North America from pre-colonial times to the present. Migration of species and trade in commodities; contrasting uses of land; the impact of industry and markets; the rise of modern conservation and environmental movements; the development of public policy; the global search for resources by the United States. TTh 11:35 - 12:50
HSHM 206a/HIST 144a/AMST 176a/EVST 206a/HUMS 323a, Science and Technology in the U.S. Daniel Kevles
The development of science and technology in American Society from the colonial period through the late twentieth century. The rise of the United States to world-class scientific and technological power; the American scientific community and the tensions it has faced in the democratic society; the role of science and technology in exploration, agriculture, industry, national defense, religion, culture, and social change. MW 11:35 - 12:25
HSHM 215a/HIST 140a, Public Health in America, 1793 - 2012. Naomi Rogers
A survey of public health in America from the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 to AIDS and breast cancer activism at the end of the past century. Focusing on medicine and the state, topics include quarantines, failures and successes of medical and social welfare, the experiences of healers and patients, and organized medicine and its critics. TTH 10:30 - 11:20
HSHM 235a/HIST 234a, Epidemics, Public Health, and Society. Frank Snowden
A study of the impact of epidemic diseases such as bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, and AIDS on society, public health, and the medical profession in comparative and international perspective. Topics include popular culture and mass hysteria, the mortality revolution, urban renewal and rebuilding, sanitation, the germ theory of disease, the emergence of scientific medicine, and debates over the biomedical model of disease. MW 10:30 - 11:20
HSHM 412a/HIST 143a, Cancer and the History of Biomedicine. Robin Scheffler
History of anticancer education and research efforts in the twentieth century. The rise of biomedical intrastructure, development of new therapies (surgical, radiological, chemothereputic, genetic), definitions of disease or pathology, debates over causation, medicine and the military, cultural images of cancer (gender and race), the emergence of a risk society, and the promissory environment of contemporary scientific research. TH 3:30 - 5:20
HSHM 413a/HIST 145Ja, X-Ray Visions: Medical Imaging since 1895. Bettyann Kevles
The development of X rays, CT, MRI, ultrasound, and nuclear medicine. Their impact on diagnostic medicine, the legal system, and culture (high and low). Topics include the nature of invention--how new technologies appear; the economics of medicine in relation to technology; the role of warfare in invention; and the impact of these technologies on the arts. T 3:30 - 5:20
HSHM 422a/HIST 140Ja, Cartography, Territory, and Identity. William Rankin
Exploration of how maps shape assumptions about territory, land, sovereignty, and identity. The relationship between scientific cartography and conquest, the geography of statecraft, religious cartographies, encounters between Western and non-Western cultures, and reactions to cartographic objectivity. Students make their own maps. W 1:30 - 3:20
HSHM 455a/HIST 148Ja, The Body in Science, Medicine, and the Arts. Paola Bertucci
The body as a site of knowledge in science, medicine, and the arts from antiquity to now. Topics: history of anatomy from Leonardo to the Body World exhibit, the artificial body from the cyborg to cosmetic surgery, gender and race in the making of natural knowledge. T 1:30 - 3:20
HSHM 458a/HIST 410Ja, Technology and Power
The relationship between technological development and political, economic, and social power. Case studies such as colonial engineering projects, railway journeys, aviation in Cold War Afghanistan, and rockets in French Guiana illustrate ways that technology has transformed relations of power around the world.
Graduate Courses
HSHM 676a/HIST 938a/LAW 20332, The Engineering and Ownership of Life. Daniel Kevles
The seminar explores the historical development of intellectual property protection in living matter. Focusing on the United States in world context, it examines arrangements outside the patent system as well as within it. Topics include agriculture, medicine, biotechnology, and law. May be taken as a reading or research course. W 3:30 - 5:20
HSHM 701a/AMST 878a/HIST 930a, Problems in the History of Medicine and Public Health. John Harley Warner
An examination of the variety of approaches to the social, cultural, and intellectual history of medicine, focusing on the United States. Reading and discussion of the recent scholarly literature on medical cultures, public health, and illness experiences from the early national period through the present. Topics include the role of gender, class, ethnicity, race, religion, and region in the experience of health care and sickness and in the construction of medical knowledge; the interplay between lay and professional understandings of the body; the role of the marketplace in shaping professional identities and patient expectations; citizenship, nationalism, and imperialism; and the visual cultures of medicine. W 1:30 - 3:20
HSHM 707a/EAST 525a/EMD 588a/HIST 902a, Impact of Epidemic Disease in Context: Focus on Asia. William Summers
The course brings historical, geopolitical, medical, and public health perspectives to bear on the study of specific epidemics, with a focus on Asia. Case studies include major epidemics such as cholera in the Philippines and plague in Manchuria in the early twentieth century, the story of Japan's biological warfare Unit 731 in World War II, recurrent influenza pandemics, and more recently, Nipah virus outbreaks in Malaysia, SARS in China, and pneumonic plague in Gujarat, India. T 3:30 - 5:20
HSHM 710a/HIST 921a, Methods for the Social Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine. Joanna Radin
Exploration of the methods and debates in the social studies of science, technology, and medicine. This course covers the history of the field and its current intellectual, social, and political positioning. It emphasizes the debates on constructivism and relativism, and provides critical tools to address the relationships among science, technology, medicine, and society. (Day and time for course to be determined)
HSHM 713a/HIST 899a, Geography and History. William Rankin
A research seminar focused on methodological questions of georgrapy and geographic analysis in historical scholarship. We will consider approaches ranging from the Annales School of the early twentieth century to contemporary research in environmental history, history of science, urban history, and more. We will also explore interdisciplinary work in social theory, historical geography, and anthropology and grapple with the promise (and drawbacks) of GIS. Students may write their research papers on any time period or geographic region, and no previous experience with geography or GIS is necessary. Undergraduates will be admitted with permission. M 1:30 - 3:20
Spring, 2013
Undergraduate Courses
HSHM 211b/HIST 143b, Catastrophe and the Earth Sciences since 1850. William Rankin
A history of the geological, atmospheric, and environmental sciences focused on predictions of global catastrophe. Topics will range from headline catastrophes like global warming, ozone depletion, and nuclear winter to historical debates about the age of the earth, the nature of fossils, and the management (or mismanagement) of natural resources. Important themes include tensions between science and religion, the role of science in government, environmental economics, and the politics of prediction, modeling, and incomplete evidence. MW 10:30 - 11:20
HSHM 437b/HIST 435Jb, The Global Crisis of Malaria. Frank Snowden
The global crisis of malaria examined in comparative and historical context. The mosquito theory of transmission and other developments in scientific understanding of the disease; World Health Organization strategies to eradicate malaria since 1955; the development of tools such as insecticides, medication, and bed nets; the attempt to create an effective vaccine. T 1:30 - 3:20
HSHM 448b/HIST 151Jb/WGSS 448b, American Medicine and the Cold War. Naomi Rogers
The social, cultural, and political history of American medicine from 1945 to 1960. The defeat of national health insurance; racism in health care; patient activism; the role of gender in defining medical professionalism and family health; the rise of atomic medicine; McCarthyism in medicine; and the polio vaccine trials and the making of science journalism. T 9:25 - 11:15
HSHM 459b/HIST 459Jb, Spies, Secrets, and Science. Paola Bertucci
The course explores the relationship between secrecy, intellectual property, and science from the Middle Ages to the Cold War. Topics covered: alchemy and esoteric knowledge; the Manhattan project and other secret scientific projects run by the state; the history of patents and copyright laws; scientists as spies. W 1:30 - 3:20
Graduate Courses
HSHM 702b/HIST 931b, Problems in the History of Science. William Rankin
Close study of recent secondary literature in the history of the physical and life sciences. An inclusive overview of the emergence and diversity of scientific ways of knowing, major scientific theories and methods, and the role of science in politics, capitalism, war, and everyday life. Discussions focus on historians' different analytic and interpretive approaches. M 1:30 - 3:20
HSHM 716b/HIST 900b, Early Modern Science and Medicine. Paola Bertucci
The course focuses on recent works in the history of science and medicine in the early modern world. We will discuss how interdisciplinary approaches--including economic and urban history, sociology and anthropology of science, gender studies, art and colonial history--have challenged the classic historiographical category of "the Scientific Revolution". We will also discuss the new avenues for research that new approaches to early modern science and medicine have opened up, placing special emphasis on the circulation of knowledge, practices of collecting, visual and material culture. T 1:30 - 3:20
HSHM 736b/HIST 943b/WGSS 730b, Health Politics, Body Politics. Naomi Rogers
A reading seminar on struggles to control, pathologize, and normalize human bodies, with a particular focus on science, medicine, and the state, both in North America and in a broader global health context. Topics include colonialism and prostitution; repression and regulation of birth control; the teaching of sex education; the public celebration and denial of sexual difference; politics of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS; public health and legal efforts to define and restrict abortion; the pathologizing and identity politics of transgendered people; and the development and regulation of artificial insemination and other methods of reproductive technology. W 1:30 - 3:20
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