Undergraduate Courses

For course times, locations, and syllabi for the current academic year, ** please see Yale Course Search. **

Also note that some graduate courses may also be open to undergraduates with permission of the instructor.

For the short list of current HSHM courses – including pathway assignments – please:

>> Click HERE to download the 2022–2023 HSHM pathway spreadsheet <<

New Courses Fall 2021

Madness and Decolonization
HSHM 419/HIST 163J
Marco Ramos

This seminar traces the history of psychiatry through its encounters and entanglements with colonial and postcolonial power. We begin with a discussion of how psychiatry has been used as an imperial tool of control in the 18th and 19th centuries. We pay particular attention to colonial scientific encounters with Indigenous and enslaved people, and how the psychiatric pathologization of Indigeneity and Blackness informed the construction of settler European whiteness. Then, we move to decolonization in the twentieth century to explore the emergence of international mental health, as former colonies transitioned to independent states. We discuss the attempts of African and Latin American thinkers, such as Frantz Fanon and Ignacio Martín-Baro, to use psychiatry for the liberation of oppressed groups in emerging postcolonial spaces. The seminar finishes with a discussion of the recent emergence of the global mental health movement and calls from former patients, BIPOC and disability activists, and others to “decolonize mental health” so that it serves—rather than harms—those traditionally marginalized by Western psychiatry. Throughout the course, students learn to trace the contours of psychiatry and decolonization through a variety of sources, including movies, music, photography, and monographs.

Reproductive Politics & Neoliberalism in Modern Latin America
HSHM 474
Emilie Egger

This seminar provides an introduction to the history of modern Latin America through the lens of reproductive politics. Historians such as Laura Briggs (2017) use this framework to address the interplay of public and private forces on the material lives of individuals, their families, and communities and how they interpret these circumstances.

We will examine key events in Latin American history alongside trends in family patterns, the many variations of eugenic policy, and political and social organizing around issues of reproduction throughout Latin America from the 1970s to the present, using the interdisciplinary definition of eugenics proposed by historian Nancy Leys Stepan (1991): “….first, as a science of heredity that was shaped by political, institutional, and cultural factors particular to the historical moment and place in which it appeared; and, second, as a social movement with an explicit set of policy proposals.” Moreover, we will critically examine how people in Latin America define kinship within these frictions. Scholar Aihwa Ong writes that as political and economic networks are being rearranged, “new kinds of humanity are in emergence” (2006).

Activism and Advocacy in the History of American Health Care
HSHM 489/HIST 109J
Kelly O’Donnell

Is health care a human right? Can health advocacy shape health policy? What does it mean to be a health “activist” and to demand change of medicine? Health care in America has always been political. In this seminar students explore the rich history of health activism and health advocacy in the modern United States, focusing primarily on the postwar period through the present day. Each week we encounter new varieties of grassroots organizing, individual activists, and advocacy organizations that have made political claims about health care and pushed for its reform. We examine how health activism shapes broader cultural conversations about health and the practice of medicine itself. This course does not aim to provide a comprehensive history of health activism in modern America, but rather takes a case study approach, for critical analysis of themes and tactics. For each session, students read a selection of essays, book chapters, or primary source materials about a particular variety of health activism. Through these readings, we discuss how the critiques of activists and the responses by medical practitioners reveal the significant impact of race, gender, class, and sexuality on the provision of health care in this country. We also consider how historians have approached this subject, both as scholars and participant-observers. Students become adept at primary source analysis and able to engage in scholarly conversations with secondary sources.

Technology in American Medicine from Leeches to Surgical Robots
HSHM 497/HIST 190J
Kelly O’Donnell

From leeches to robot-assisted surgery, technology has both driven and served as a marker of change in the history of medicine. Using technology as our primary frame of analysis, this course focuses on developments in modern medicine and healing practices in the United States, from the nineteenth century through the present day. How have technologies, tools, and techniques altered medical practice? Are medical technologies necessarily “advances?” How are technologies used to “medicalize” certain aspects of the human experience? In this class we focus on this material culture of medicine, particularly emphasizing themes of consumerism, expertise, professional authority, and gender relations.

First-Year Seminars

Medicine and Society in American History
HSHM 005/HIST 006
Rebecca Tannenbaum

Lecture Courses

Global Catastrophe since 1750
HSHM 211/HIST 416/EVST 211/G&G 211
Bill Rankin

A history of the geological, atmospheric, and environmental sciences, with a focus on predictions of global catastrophe. Topics range from headline catastrophes such as global warming, ozone depletion, and nuclear winter to historical debates about the age of the Earth, the nature of fossils, and the management of natural resources. Tensions between science and religion; the role of science in government; environmental economics; the politics of prediction, modeling, and incomplete evidence.

Biomedical Futures and Michael Crichton’s Monsters
HSHM 217/HIST 485/AMST 215/HUMS 219
Joanna Radin

What forms of life have been produced by modern science? The literal life-changing technologies that began to emerge after the Second World War also provoked new anxieties. They expressed themselves in the speculative fiction of Michael Crichton in terms of monsters: the virus in The Andromeda Strain, the androids in Westworld, the velociraptors of Jurassic Park, and even the patients maimed by gunshot wounds in ER. Crichton wrote thrilling stories that also asked his readers to consider what monsters humans could make if they didn’t stop to consider whether or not they should. This course examines the emergence of modern life science to consider what it would take to produce more life-sustaining futures.

The Scientific Revolution
HSHM 226/HIST 236
Ivano Dal Prete

Sickness and Health in African American History
HSHM 241/HIST 479/AFAM 170/WGSS 270
Carolyn Roberts

A history of American medicine through the African American experience covering the period of slavery through #BlackLivesMatter. Oriented around the complex dynamics of medical abuse and medical resistance, key themes include medicine and slavery; gender and reproduction; medical experimentation and ethics; the rise of racial science; lynching and vigilante violence; segregation and public health; African-descended approaches to health and healing; the rise of the African American medical profession; and black health activism from slavery to #BlackLivesMatter.

Undergraduate Seminars

Heathcare for the Urban Poor
HSHM 406/HIST 150J
Sakena Abedin

Exploration of the institutions, movements, and policies that have attempted to provide healthcare for the urban poor in America from the late nineteenth century to the present, with emphasis on the ideas (about health, cities, neighborhoods, poverty, race, gender, difference, etc) that shaped them. Topics include hospitals, health centers, public health programs, the medical civil rights movement, the women’s health movement, and national healthcare policies such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Collecting Nature and Art in the Preindustrial World
HSHM 407/HIST 176J
Paola Bertucci

A history of museums before the emergence of the modern museum. Focus on: cabinets of curiosities and Wunderkammern, anatomical theaters and apothecaries’ shops, alchemical workshops and theaters of machines, collections of monsters, rarities, and exotic specimens.

Laboratory Life
HSHM 412/HIST 429J
Chitra Ramalingam

The laboratory is the iconic space of modern science, where unruly nature is tamed and controlled, and scientific facts are made. Through historical, ethnographic, and sociological approaches to lab science, this course explores how an obscure, secretive site for managing alchemical labor in medieval Europe became the globally dominant mode of producing universal experimental knowledge across the modern sciences. We consider issues of labor, skill and class; gender and race; pedagogy and the politics of profession; state, industrial, and corporate laboratories; secrecy and openness; place and geography; and the implication of labs in geopolitical webs of power, inequality, and exploitation.

Madness and Decolonization
HSHM 419/HIST 163J
Marco Ramos

This seminar traces the history of psychiatry through its encounters and entanglements with colonial and postcolonial power. We begin with a discussion of how psychiatry has been used as an imperial tool of control in the 18th and 19th centuries. We pay particular attention to colonial scientific encounters with Indigenous and enslaved people, and how the psychiatric pathologization of Indigeneity and Blackness informed the construction of settler European whiteness. Then, we move to decolonization in the twentieth century to explore the emergence of international mental health, as former colonies transitioned to independent states. We discuss the attempts of African and Latin American thinkers, such as Frantz Fanon and Ignacio Martín-Baro, to use psychiatry for the liberation of oppressed groups in emerging postcolonial spaces. The seminar finishes with a discussion of the recent emergence of the global mental health movement and calls from former patients, BIPOC and disability activists, and others to “decolonize mental health” so that it serves—rather than harms—those traditionally marginalized by Western psychiatry. Throughout the course, students learn to trace the contours of psychiatry and decolonization through a variety of sources, including movies, music, photography, and monographs.

Cartography, Territory and Identity
HSHM 422/HIST 440J
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. No previous experience in cartography or graphic design required.

Critical Data Visualization: History, Theory, and Practice
HSHM 449/HIST 449J
Bill Rankin

Sex, Life, and Generation
HSHM 468 / HIST 455J
Ivano Dal Prete

Theories and practices of life, sex and generation in history perspective. From the social control of abortion and infanticide in early-modern societies, to the changing status of the embryo, to the lure of artificial life.

Vaccination in Historical Perspective
HSHM 473/HIST 403J
Jason Schwartz

For over two centuries, vaccination has been a prominent, effective, and at times controversial component of public health activities in the United States and around the world. Despite the novelty of many aspects of contemporary vaccines and vaccination programs, they reflect a rich and often contested history that combines questions of science, medicine, public health, global health, economics, law, and ethics, among other topics. This course examines the history of vaccines and vaccination programs, with a particular focus on the 20th and 21st centuries and on the historical roots of contemporary issues in U.S. and global vaccination policy. Students gain a thorough, historically grounded understanding of the scope and design of vaccination efforts, past and present, and the interconnected social, cultural, and political issues that vaccination has raised throughout its history and continues to raise today.

Reproductive Politics & Neoliberalism in Modern Latin America
HSHM 474
Emilie Egger

This seminar provides an introduction to the history of modern Latin America through the lens of reproductive politics. Historians such as Laura Briggs (2017) use this framework to address the interplay of public and private forces on the material lives of individuals, their families, and communities and how they interpret these circumstances.

We will examine key events in Latin American history alongside trends in family patterns, the many variations of eugenic policy, and political and social organizing around issues of reproduction throughout Latin America from the 1970s to the present, using the interdisciplinary definition of eugenics proposed by historian Nancy Leys Stepan (1991): “….first, as a science of heredity that was shaped by political, institutional, and cultural factors particular to the historical moment and place in which it appeared; and, second, as a social movement with an explicit set of policy proposals.” Moreover, we will critically examine how people in Latin America define kinship within these frictions. Scholar Aihwa Ong writes that as political and economic networks are being rearranged, “new kinds of humanity are in emergence” (2006).

Race and Disease in American Medicine
HSHM 475/HIST 128J
Sakena Abedin

An exploration of the history of race and disease in American medicine from the late 19th century to the present, focusing on clinical practice and clinical research. We discuss cancer, psychiatric disease, sickle cell disease, and infectious diseases including tuberculosis and HIV. We examine the role of race in the construction of disease and the role of disease in generating and supporting racial hierarchies, with special attention to the role of visibility and the visual in these processes. We also consider the history of race and clinical research, and the implications of racialized disease construction for the production of medical knowledge.

Critical Theories of Science and Religion
HSHM 477/HIST 428J/HUMS 463/RLST 437
Khawaja/Radin

This course is an introduction to new thinking about the relationship of science and religion in global modernities. Drawing from work in feminist and indigenous studies, critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and multispecies thought, we explore systematic questions at the intersection of metaphysics, history of science, and politics. How can attending to the role of practice alter our understanding of how knowledge is produced across scientific and religious worlds? What is a world, and who gets to define it? How might a new contract between science and religion reveal fresh possibilities for an ethical response to late capitalism: addressing historic exclusions, structural inequalities, and human-nonhuman relations? Readings may include: Bruno Latour, Donna Haraway, Kim TallBear, Anna Tsing, Isabell Stengers, Cathy Gere, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Karen Barad, Robert Bellah, Gabriel Marcel, Elizabeth Povinelli, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Aicha Beliso-De Jesus, Marilyn Strathern, Catherine Keller, Abou Farman, Webb Keane.

Medicine and Race in the Slave Trade
HSHM 481/HIST 383J/AFST 481/AFAM 213
Carolyn Roberts

Examination of the interconnected histories of medicine and race in the slave trade. Topics include the medical geography of the slave trade from slave prisons in West Africa to slave ships; slave trade drugs and forced drug consumption; mental and physical illnesses and their treatments; gender and the body; British and West African medicine and medical knowledge in the slave trade; eighteenth-century theories of racial difference and disease; medical violence and medical ethics.

African Systems of Thought
HSHM 486/HIST 374J/AFST 486
Nana Quarshie

This seminar explores the effects of colonialism and post-colonial power relations on the production of scientific, medical, and embodied knowledge about Africa. The course focuses on three broad themes covered across four units. First, we read debates over the nature and definition of science and tradition. How have colonialism and post-colonial power relations defined the tasks of an African science? What does it mean to decolonize African thought or culture? Second, we examine the nature of rationality. Is reason singular or plural? Culturally-bound or universal? To what extent are witchcraft, African healing practices, and ancestor veneration rational practices? Is there a “traditional” rationality? Third, we explore the relationship between scientific representations, social practices, and local culture. What relationship exists between social practices and culturally shared categories of knowledge? Lastly, we examine the intersection of capital and medical expertise. How have shifting conceptions of value and capital, reshaped scientific and medical authority in Africa?

The History of Drugs and Addiction in Twentieth Century America
HSHM 488/HIST 153J
Marco Ramos

Virtually every American today “does” drugs. As a nation, our drug use ranges from everyday activities, such as drinking coffee or beer, to combating illnesses with prescription medications, to using illegal drugs for recreation. This course follows a loose chronology beginning in the early twentieth century and ending in the present day. Instead of focusing on the biography of a single drug, or class of drugs, this course incorporates a wide range of substances, including alcohol, cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, and narcotics. For each session, students read a selection of essays, book chapters, and primary source material. Through these readings, we discuss how certain ways of using and selling drugs have been sanctioned and encouraged, while others have been pathologized as addiction or criminalized. We explore how drug definitions are constructed, how they shift over time, how they affect (and are affected by) people who use, sell, and regulate drugs. We also trace how the medicalized concept of “addiction” emerged in the twentieth century and how this concept intersected with societal anxieties about race, immigration, indigeneity, and gender. Throughout the course, films, images, music, and television episodes are presented as objects of analysis to provide insight into the cultural lives of drugs. As a group, we discuss how historians have approached this subject, assess their sources and assumptions, and consider the choices they have made in researching and writing. Students are expected to apply these lessons and demonstrate the ability to think and write critically about the history of drugs.

Activism and Advocacy in the History of American Health Care
HSHM 489/HIST 109J
Kelly O’Donnell

Is health care a human right? Can health advocacy shape health policy? What does it mean to be a health “activist” and to demand change of medicine? Health care in America has always been political. In this seminar students explore the rich history of health activism and health advocacy in the modern United States, focusing primarily on the postwar period through the present day. Each week we encounter new varieties of grassroots organizing, individual activists, and advocacy organizations that have made political claims about health care and pushed for its reform. We examine how health activism shapes broader cultural conversations about health and the practice of medicine itself. This course does not aim to provide a comprehensive history of health activism in modern America, but rather takes a case study approach, for critical analysis of themes and tactics. For each session, students read a selection of essays, book chapters, or primary source materials about a particular variety of health activism. Through these readings, we discuss how the critiques of activists and the responses by medical practitioners reveal the significant impact of race, gender, class, and sexuality on the provision of health care in this country. We also consider how historians have approached this subject, both as scholars and participant-observers. Students become adept at primary source analysis and able to engage in scholarly conversations with secondary sources.

Technology in American Medicine from Leeches to Surgical Robots
HSHM 497/HIST 190J
Kelly O’Donnell

From leeches to robot-assisted surgery, technology has both driven and served as a marker of change in the history of medicine. Using technology as our primary frame of analysis, this course focuses on developments in modern medicine and healing practices in the United States, from the nineteenth century through the present day. How have technologies, tools, and techniques altered medical practice? Are medical technologies necessarily “advances?” How are technologies used to “medicalize” certain aspects of the human experience? In this class we focus on this material culture of medicine, particularly emphasizing themes of consumerism, expertise, professional authority, and gender relations.