Departmental electives are an important requirement of the HSOC major program. Departmental electives are courses that are taught by History and Sociology of Science (HSS) faculty and instructors and also include any additional core courses that students choose to take. (For example, a student might take both a medical sociology and a medical anthropology course and apply one of these to their core requirement and the other could count as a department elective.)
Through departmental electives, students:
- acquire a foundation in the department's approach and methodology from its faculty and
- acquire the critical perspectives important for understanding of the social context of health and medicine.
HSOC majors take three department electives. In Path@Penn, department electives have the "AHSM" course attribute tag.
The courses on the list below may be used to fulfill this requirement. Students may not petition courses for this requirement.
The following cannot be used to fulfill this requirement:
- Study abroad courses
- Non-College courses
- Courses that do NOT have the "AHSM" course attribute tag
Select three (3) cu from the following electives:
Please note, this list is not exhaustive and may change as new instructors and new courses are added. Check the "AHSM" course attribute list on Path@Penn, too. If you ever have any doubts or questions about whether something counts as a department elective, always check with the Associate Director to be sure.
HSOC 0311: Addiction
HSOC 0313: Cane and Able
HSOC 0331: Autism Epidemic
HSOC 0343: Why Medical Interventions Work (STSC 0343)
HSOC 0361: Missionaries and Medical Partners
HSOC 0387: Epidemics in History (STSC 0387)
HSOC 0400: Medicine in History (STSC 0400)
HSOC 0480: Health and Societies
HSOC 0490: Comparative Medicine (STSC 0490)
HSOC 1222: Medical Sociology (SOCI 1110)
HSOC 1312: Mental Illness (SOCI 1111)
HSOC 1330: Bioethics
HSOC 1362: Bacteria, Bodies, and Empires (HIST 1365)
HSOC 1382: Medical Anthropology (ANTH 1238)
HSOC 1401: The People's Health
HSOC 1411: American Health Policy
HSOC 2198: Race, Science and Globalization (STSC 2198)
HSOC 2211: Sex, Sexuality, and Sexual Science in South Asia (SAST 2211)
HSOC 2213: Herbs and Humors: Medieval and Early Modern Pharmacology
HSOC 2227: Trauma and Healing (STSC 2227)
HSOC 2254: Medicine and Technology
HSOC 2293: From Madness to Mental Health
HSOC 2303: Fundamentals of Epidemiology
HSOC 2304: Insect Epidemiology
HSOC 2347: Autism, Past and Present
HSOC 2401: Social Determinants of Health
HSOC 2418: Engineering Cultures
HSOC 2433: Sustainability and Public Health
HSOC 2457: History of Bioethics
HSOC 2483: Health, Politics, and Social Movements
HSOC 2511: Foundations of Public Health
HSOC 2514: Environments and Public Health
HSOC 2518: Devices, Pills, People
HSOC 2523: Technology and Medicine in Modern America
HSOC 2526: Intro to Complementary and Alternative Medicine
HSOC 2537: Gender and Health
HSOC 2563: Doing Good?
HSOC 2583: Law and Medicine
HSOC 2707: Data and Death (STSC 2707)
HSOC 2803: Environments and Health
HSOC 3028: Normal People (STSC 3028)
HSOC 3185: Toxicity (STSC 3216)
HSOC 3210: Health in Philly
HSOC 3279: Nutritional Modernities (STSC3279)
HSOC 3299: CSI Global: Forensic Medicine (STSC 3299)
HSOC 3313: Reproductive Medicine
HSOC 3326: Medicine/Healing in China (EALC 3522)
HSOC 3327: Birth Culture and Medical Technology
HSOC 3328: Women in Medicine
HSOC 3356: The Human Subject
HSOC 3383: Bioethics and National Security (STSC 3509)
HSOC 3389: Care: A Research Seminar
HSOC 3447: Disabilities and Epidemics
HSOC 3488: Current Issues in Global Health
HSOC 3524: Medical Mestizaje (LALS 3524)
HSOC 3528: Public Health and Violence
HSOC 3549: Fertile Bodies
HSOC 3644: Minds, Bodies, and Machines (STSC 3644)
HSOC 3803: Bodies and Borders
HSOC 3889: Trans Method (STSC 3889/GSWS 3500)
HSOC 4000-level capstones
STSC 0100: Emergence of Modern Science (HSOC 0100)
STSC 0283: Medicine, Magic, Miracles (HSOC 0283)
STSC 0600: Technology and Society (HSOC 0600)
STSC 0823: Sport Science in the World (HSOC 0823)
STSC 0883: Climate and Change (HSOC 0883)
STSC 1101: Science and Literature
STSC 1120: Science, Technology and Warfare (HSOC 1120)
STSC 1151: Modern Biology and Social Implications
STSC 1201: Darwin's Legacies
STSC 1400: Histories of Race and Science in Philadelphia
STSC 1600: Information Age
STSC 1788: Everyday Technologies
STSC 1880: Environment and Society
STSC 1897: Down to Earth: Introduction to Environmental History
STSC 2018: Science in the Public
STSC 2080: Science and Religion
STSC 2097: Race and Gender in Global Science (HSOC 2097)
STSC 2198: Race, Science, and Globalization (HSOC 2198)
STSC 2296: Technologies of Self and Society
STSC 2418: Engineering Cultures (HSOC 2418)
STSC 2421: Manufacturing Minds (HSOC 2421)
STSC 2607: Cyberculture
STSC 2644: Artificial Subjects: Golems, Homunculi, Robots, and Cyborgs
STSC 2707: Data and Death (HSOC 2707)
STSC 2708: Digital Democracy
STSC 2757: Prove it!
STSC 2829: Nature's Nation (HSOC 2829)
STSC 3017: Biology and Society (HSOC 3017)
STSC 3087: Science and Spectacle
STSC 3097: Indigenous Science (HSOC 3097)
STSC 3136: Queer Science
STSC 3145: The Universe
STSC 3167: The Atomic Bomb
STSC 3183: Profit and Knowledge
STSC 3185: Global Radiation History (HSOC 3185)
STSC 3216: Toxicity in Context (HSOC 3216)
STSC 3217: Weird Science
STSC 3279: Nutritional Modernities (HSOC 3279)
STSC 3283: Sciences of Kinship
STSC 3288: What is Prediction?
STSC 3299: CSI Global: Forensic Medicine (HSOC 3299)
STSC 3334: Hybrid Science: Nature, Health and Society in Latin America (HSOC 3334)
STSC 3509: Bioethics and National Security (HSOC 3509)
STSC 3607: Data Dreams
STSC 3627: Waters, Roads and Wires
STSC 3657: Technology and Democracy
STSC 3708: Many lives of data
STSC 3709: Rifle and Compass
STSC 3766: Cultures of Surveillance (ANTH 3766)
STSC 3824: Animals in Science, Medicine, and Technology (HSOC 3824)
STSC 3923: Animals in America