WGSS 371
Medicine and Campus Health in Disruptive Times Fall 2021
Division II Writing Skills Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed ANTH 371 / STS 370
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

This class applies the methods and theories of critical medical anthropology and medical sociology to help students design and pursue innovative ethnographic projects that explore campus or community health. How do disruptive moments like COVID-19 serve as focal moments in social history that reveal underlying social inequalities of access, health outcomes, and well-being? Students learn and use an array of ethnographic techniques such as observant participation, interviewing, focus groups, and qualitative surveys building on weekly discussions, feedback, and design exercises to explore our campus and/or wider community. We situate our campus health projects by considering the wider context of power and intersectionality that inflect and structure health and well-being within our community, nation, & world. Our case ethnographies explore how structural racism shapes medical education and healthcare care in the US, how concepts of sexual citizenship can reshape debates on sexual assault on campus, how the spread of US psychiatry inflects the landscape of global mental health across Asia, and how queer activism responds to the HIV/AIDS crisis. We consider the roles of narrative, active listening, and empathy in both medicine and ethnography, while practicing skills that can benefit student researchers and interlocutors, providers as well as patients. Our goal is understand the strengths and limits of qualitative and participatory research within communities always already structured by power, privilege, and engaged practices.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 20
Expected: 20
Class#: 1405
Grading: yes pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: Three written fieldnotes, weekly attendance, writing and discussion exercises, & final oral presentations & data visualizations for fieldwork projects.
Prerequisites: A course in Anthropology, Sociology, Science & Technology Studies, or across DIV II is strongly recommended
Enrollment Preferences: Majors in Anthropology, Sociology, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Concentrators in Public Health, Science and Technology Studies
Distributions: Division II Writing Skills Difference, Power, and Equity
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ANTH 371 Division II WGSS 371 Division II STS 370 Division II
WS Notes: This class assignments includes over 9,000 words of essay assignments, and will help students develop critical writing skills, including use of rhetoric, evidence, argument, synthesizing data, logic, and anticipating counter-arguments.
DPE Notes: This class examines the intersectionality of race, class, gender, & sexuality in impacting healthcare and health outcomes. It theorizes and explores the ways that intersectionality and implicit bias shapes health and well-being in the community, patient/provider encounters, and efforts to 'improve' community and individual health in the US, Asia, and across the globe.
Attributes: EXPE Experiential Education Courses
PHLH Methods in Public Health

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