AMST 352
Global Health in the Transpacific
Last Offered Spring 2022
Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed ASIA 352 / STS 311
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Class Details

East is East, and West is West, Rudyard Kipling famously wrote in 1889, but never has this been true. Just as war, imperialism, and transnational flows of capital move people, cultures, and ideas across the Pacific, similar patterns of migration and mobility shape the transmission of illness and disease as well. This course explores global health and disease control as sites of domination and resistance in the Pacific Rim. Articulating the linkages between Asia/America, we will look at the racialization of people and pestilence during the third plague pandemic in Hong Kong and San Francisco, malaria control projects in colonial Southeast Asia, and the rise of modern genomics out of the ashes of Hiroshima and concern over radiation risk, and other cases, to understand how disregard for Asian bodies has shaped the development of modern medicine and public health. At the same time, Indonesia’s claim of “viral sovereignty” to protect their biological specimens from Western intellectual property regimes and Hmong refugees’ resistance to biomedical intervention in their struggles with mental illness offer counterpoints to Western hegemony. This course provides a critical examination of biosecurity as modern geopolitical struggle and puts Asia-Pacific and the Pacific Rim at the center of our exploration of global health.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 12
Expected: 12
Class#: 3418
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: Reading responses, two short review essays, and one seminar paper
Prerequisites: Previous coursework in anthropology and sociology, some knowledge of the Asia-Pacific region.
Enrollment Preferences: Juniors and Seniors, STS concentrators. If overenrolled, students will submit a short paragraph explaining their interest in the course.
Distributions: Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ASIA 352 Division II STS 311 Division II AMST 352 Division II
DPE Notes: This course examines the inequalities that shape global health interventions.
Attributes: PHLH Bioethics + Interpretations of Health

Class Grid

Updated 2:06 pm

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