Staying Alive: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Health in the Anthropocene

Content

All humans want, and deserve, a life of health and well-being. But what is this “health” we strive to, and how do we attain and maintain it?
This course focuses on the fundamental notion of health. We begin by defining health, and the lack of it (i.e., disease) from biological and medical perspectives. We will then explore the human experience of health and disease through representations in popular media and literature. Finally, we will interrogate how medical, healthcare, and pharmaceutical constructs define, shape, and drive current sociocultural experiences of health.
Using concepts from molecular biology, sociology, medical anthropology, science and technology studies (STS), and media analysis (and more), we ultimately aim to integrate the social and the scientific: how does society, and how do humans, access and utilize health(care)? Can we do better? What would a different collective future look like?