This course is an introduction to the historical development of medical ethics and to the birth of bioethics in the twentieth-century United States. We will examine how and why medical ethical issues arose in American society at this time. Themes will include human experimentation, organ donation, the rise of medical technology and euthanasia. Finally, this course will examine the contention that the current discipline of bioethics is a purely American phenomenon that has been exported to Great Britain, Canada and Continental Europe.

When asked to tell its own history, ChatGPT answers literally, describing (vaguely of course) its own training data set. When pressed to describe the longer history of “technology like you,” it mentions early computer science, programs that played chess or solved math problems, before naming deep learning algorithms and big data as the key breakthroughs. This lineage is not untrue, but it ignores the wider context in which individuals and organizations have come to pursue this strange dream of crafting an intelligent object. As an uncannily lucid conversation partner who freely performs all manner of textual tasks, ChatGPT participates in a longstanding tension in the history of information technology between the goals of manufacturing minds and making mindless clerical workers. In this course we historicize that tension in three domains—calculation, knowledge work, and games—all of which directly inform our efforts to imagine what ChatGPT and its ilk might be. Throughout, we will attend to the ways machinery shaped specific tasks’ construction in relation to gender, race, and class identities. We will see how technologies often imagined as disembodied are always material, interacting with human bodies and physical environments.

There may be no more unstable diagnosis in the history of medicine than autism. Originally considered rare, it has now been characterized as "epidemic"; initially considered a psychiatric disorder, it was subsequently classified as a developmental disability, and today is considered by many advocates to be an identity; at first attached to children who were quite disabled, it now describes extraordinarily accomplished academics, physicians, and lawyers as well. There may also be no more ubiquitous diagnosis in our current moment. As prevalence rates have soared to one out of every 36 children affected, it seems as if everyone is touched by autism in some capacity -- although a personal connection to autism is not at all required for this course.
This class will cover the history of autism, from its introduction in 1943 to the present -- a trajectory that intersects with the histories of medicine, psychiatry, and disability. We will also explore the divisive issues fracturing the autism community right now, including the rise of Neurodiversity, inclusion, impairment, caregiving, representation, and even the very words we use to discuss those on the spectrum.

How did the development of Atlantic World slave societies give rise to new knowledge about bodies, health and disease, race, and medical therapeutics? In this course we explore the relationship between slavery and disease and its impact upon European, Native American, and African descended populations in the Americas during the era of early contact to the early nineteenth century. We pay special attention to slavery’s economic, environmental, and human costs, as we investigate the development of the medical profession and the acquisition of formal and informal medical knowledge in this epoch. Beyond that, we will investigate how perceptions of disease susceptibility and overall experiences with specific illnesses proceeded along raced and gendered lines. Topics we cover include the exchange of ideas about health and healing, responses to epidemics, the racialization of disease, slavery and commerce as conduits of disease.

This course considers the diverse range of theories and topics related to trauma in the 20th and 21st centuries, looking to understand how trauma has been mobilized at different moments in history for political, social, and personal ends. The point of the course is not to simply support or deny trauma as an interpretive framework for human pain and suffering, but instead to look critically at how it emerged as an object of study for medical and scientific circles and the benefits and ramifications of those biomedical frameworks that were felt at the time and stay with us into the present. We also consider how trauma has been taken up by actors outside of medicine and science, including popular media, fiction and activist communities. Using frameworks from feminist science studies, disability studies, black studies and queer studies, alongside more traditional histories of psychiatry, medicine and technology, students think about such diverse topics as sexual violence, racial violence, domestic and familial abuse, theories of psychological development, memory and trust, citizenship, the criminal justice system, the effects of our environments, intergenerational effects of violence, embodiment, biomedical models of risk and disease and narratives of the self. At the heart of this course is an interest in how we should understand humans’ capacity to harm and be harmed by one another, and how we can attend to the enduring effects of inequality and structural violence while remaining firmly grounded in the day-to-day lived, felt realities of violence and interpersonal harm.

This course is designed to introduce students to the quantitative study of factors that influence the health of populations. Topics to be addressed include methods for characterizing levels of health in populations, comparative and historical perspectives on population health, health disparities, health policy issues and the effectiveness of interventions for enhancing the health of populations. These topics will be addressed both for developed and developing world populations. The course will focus on specific areas of health and some of the major issues and conclusions pertaining to those domains. Areas singled out for attention include chronic diseases and their major risk factors, such as smoking, physical activity, dietary factors and obesity. Throughout the course, the focus will be on determining the quality of evidence for health policy and understanding the manner in which it was generated.

This course is designed to introduce students to the quantitative study of factors that influence the health of populations. Topics to be addressed include methods for characterizing levels of health in populations, comparative and historical perspectives on population health, health disparities, health policy issues and the effectiveness of interventions for enhancing the health of populations. These topics will be addressed both for developed and developing world populations. The course will focus on specific areas of health and some of the major issues and conclusions pertaining to those domains. Areas singled out for attention include chronic diseases and their major risk factors, such as smoking, physical activity, dietary factors and obesity. Throughout the course, the focus will be on determining the quality of evidence for health policy and understanding the manner in which it was generated.

This course is designed to introduce students to the quantitative study of factors that influence the health of populations. Topics to be addressed include methods for characterizing levels of health in populations, comparative and historical perspectives on population health, health disparities, health policy issues and the effectiveness of interventions for enhancing the health of populations. These topics will be addressed both for developed and developing world populations. The course will focus on specific areas of health and some of the major issues and conclusions pertaining to those domains. Areas singled out for attention include chronic diseases and their major risk factors, such as smoking, physical activity, dietary factors and obesity. Throughout the course, the focus will be on determining the quality of evidence for health policy and understanding the manner in which it was generated.

One of the defining characteristics of all the social sciences, including sociology, is a commitment to empirical research as the basis for knowledge. This course is designed to provide you with a basic understanding of research in the social sciences and to enable you to think like a social scientist. Through this course students will learn both the logic of sociological inquiry and the nuts and bolts of doing empirical research. We will focus on such issues as the relationship between theory and research, the logic of research design, issues of conceptualization and measurement, basic methods of data collection, and what social scientists do with data once they have collected them. By the end of the course, students will have completed sociological research projects utilizing different empirical methods, be able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various research strategies, and read (with understanding) published accounts of social science research.

One of the defining characteristics of all the social sciences, including sociology, is a commitment to empirical research as the basis for knowledge. This course is designed to provide you with a basic understanding of research in the social sciences and to enable you to think like a social scientist. Through this course students will learn both the logic of sociological inquiry and the nuts and bolts of doing empirical research. We will focus on such issues as the relationship between theory and research, the logic of research design, issues of conceptualization and measurement, basic methods of data collection, and what social scientists do with data once they have collected them. By the end of the course, students will have completed sociological research projects utilizing different empirical methods, be able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various research strategies, and read (with understanding) published accounts of social science research.