Health and Illness
Spring 2004
TTH 10:00-11:15
Instructor: Julian M. Murchison
Room: SH 269
Office: SH 346
Office Hours: TTh 3:15-4:15 and W 10:00-12:00, or by appointment
Email: murchjm@millsaps.edu
Phone: Ext. 1437
Contents:
Course Description
Required Texts
Course Requirements
Class Policies
Class Schedule
Virtually all human beings experience sickness of one sort or another during the course of their lives. However, how they diagnose, treat, and even experience these sicknesses varies from person to person, place to place, culture to culture, and society to society. Using diverse examples ranging from AIDS in Haiti to chiropractic care in the United States, we will examine these differences and compare different systems and ask whether states of health and well-being are in fact culturally, socially, and contextually relative. We will analyze different approaches to healing and healthcare, with a particular focus on how these different approaches fit into larger social and cultural systems. This consideration of larger social and cultural systems will focus on issues such as politics, economics, gender, and religion.
The goal of this course is to encourage you to examine critically the social and cultural factors that factor into experiences of health and illness. This course will often require you to question the things that you and others have learned to take for granted. In this process, we will often find ourselves wondering and asking where the boundaries lie between the natural/scientific and the social/cultural.
Bluebond-Langner, Myra
1978The private worlds of dying children. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Fadiman, Anne
1997The spirit catches you and you fall down: a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Farmer, Paul
1992AIDS and accusation: Haiti and the geography of blame. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Freund, Peter E. S., Meredith B. McGuire, and Linda S. Podhurst
2003Health, illness, and the social body: a critical sociology. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
Katz, Pearl
1999The scalpel's edge: the culture of surgeons. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Quinlan, Marsha B.
2004From the Bush: the front line of health care in a Caribbean village. Belmont , CA: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning.
Santiago-Irizarry, Vilma
2001Medicalizing ethnicity: the construction of Latino identity in a psychiatric setting. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
1) Attendance and Participation (20%) You are required to attend class and to participate in class discussions and activities. Each of you is allowed two absences before your attendance and participation grade begins to suffer. Please note that this policy does not discriminate between excused and unexcused absences; you are allowed two absences total. I will make exceptions for college-sanctioned events, such as Model-UN or intercollegiate athletics. However, you are responsible for talking to me about any such absences ahead of time. This is a discussion-oriented course, and a significant component of your grade will depend on your regular, productive participation in class discussion and other activities. It is not enough simply to attend class in the sense of filling a chair. In order to earn a good attendance and participation grade, you must regularly come to class prepared to participate in an engaged and thoughtful manner (i.e., having done the reading and other assignments). Tardiness is disruptive for the entire class and will negatively affect your attendance and participation grade.
2) Discussion Leadership (5%) Each of you will be responsible for leading discussion for one class period this semester. This means that you should come prepared with questions/topics and strategies for leading class discussion. Your grade will be based on the thoroughness of your preparation and your success in engaging the class in a productive discussion. Remember that this is a cooperative endeavor. You can help your classmates, and they can help you.
3) Class Presentation (10%) Each of you will present on a different specific topic of interest during the course of the semester. Within the first two weeks, I will provide a list of possible topics from which you can choose your topic. These presentations should be interesting and informative and last approximately 15-20 minutes. You should produce a handout to accompany your presentation and may want to consider other accompanying media to supplement your presentation.
4) Exams (30%) There will be two exams (each worth 15% of your final grade), one at the midpoint of the semester and one at the end. These exams will include several short answer questions and a single essay. They will cover specific terms and concepts as well as the broader theoretical issues that we engage.
6) Final Research Paper (35%) This research paper will be the largest single component of your final grade. You will write about a topic of your choosing that falls within the broad scope of “Health and Illness.” The paper will be 3,500-5,000 words and will be based on detailed and comprehensive library research. Your grade for this paper will be based on three separate, graded assignments: (1) bibliography/outline (5%); (2) rough draft (10%); and (3) final draft (20%). In an upper-level seminar, I expect a high quality of research and writing. Therefore, you should plan to begin your research early and work on it consistently throughout the course of the semester. We will schedule meetings to discuss your research and rough drafts individually, but you should also feel free to arrange to meet with me at any point to discuss ideas, questions, or sticking points.
The dates provided on this syllabus for the submission of assignments are deadlines. You should submit all assignments by the beginning of the class meeting on the date due. You should also keep a hard copy of all assignments and save them on disk for your own records. Computer problems are not an acceptable excuse for late papers. Late submissions will only be accepted at the discretion of the instructor and, if accepted, will be penalized half of a letter grade (5%) for each day (i.e., 24-hour period) late. If legitimate, unavoidable circumstances require you to seek an extension, make sure you consult with me about an extension as early as possible before the deadline. No work will be accepted after the final exam date.
If you miss class, for whatever reason (i.e., excused or unexcused, including due to late registration), you are responsible for making up any work. Talk to me and fellow students to find out what was covered, get notes, etc. You will not be allowed to make up an exam unless you provide proper documentation indicating that your absence was excused.
You are responsible for doing all of the reading on time. Read ahead if you can. If a reading assignment is listed for a particular day, that reading assignment should be completed prior to the class meeting on that day. In order for reading to be useful, you must comprehend and engage with the material. Therefore, reading involves more than simply passing your eyes over the text; it involves taking notes and thinking critically about the words on the page. Reading will provide the basis for class discussion and examination of key anthropological topics.
If you have a question about a topic covered in the readings, class, or elsewhere, please do not hesitate to ask me about it. You are welcome to contact me over email or to come to see me during office hours, but I also encourage you to ask questions in class, where your classmates can benefit from your questions.
As students at Millsaps, you have all pledged to abide by the Millsaps Honor Code. I expect you to meet the high standards of academic honesty embodied in the Honor Code. Academic honesty is vital for our intellectual endeavors. Plagiarism and other forms of cheating are acts of dishonesty. If I find that a student has been academically dishonest, college policies require that I report the case to the academic dean for consideration by the Honor Council. Please take your responsibilities under the Honor Code very seriously. You should always submit your own original work for this class and cite all sources upon which you have drawn in developing papers and other projects. I will be unable to grade your work if you fail to provide proper citations. If you have questions about these issues, please see me.
If you are challenged with a learning disability, it is your responsibility to register with Student Services and to inform me of any allowances granted by the college. I will be happy to work with you to make sure that we arrange for the appropriate allowances.
Class Schedule:
Week 1 (1/12/04-1/16/04): Introductions
Tuesday: Syllabus
Thursday: Fruend et al., 1-44
Week 2 (1/19/04-1/23/04): Biomedicine and the Culture of Surgeons
Tuesday: Freund et al., 45-79
Thursday: Katz, vii-xi, 1-62, 211-212
Week 3 (1/26/04-1/30/04): The Culture of Surgeons (cont.)
Tuesday: Katz, 63-124
Thursday: Katz, 125-210
Week 4 (2/2/04-2/6/04): Social Constructions of Health and Illness
Tuesday: Freund et al., 195-254
Thursday: Bluebond-Langner, ix-xi, 3-134
Week 5 (2/9/04-2/13/04): Illness from the Patient’s Perspective
Tuesday: Bluebond-Langner, 135-197
Thursday: Bluebond-Langner, 198-235 (Appendix = Recommended Reading)
*PROPOSAL FOR FINAL RESEARCH PAPER DUE*
Week 6 (2/16/04-2/20/04): Symbols and Categories of Healing
Tuesday: Freund et al., 80-167
Thursday: Quinlan, 1-50
Week 7 (2/23/04-2/27/04): Healing in the Caribbean
Tuesday: Quinlan, 51-86
Thursday: Quinlan, 87-130
*EXAM #1*
Week 8 (3/1/04-3/5/04): AIDS and Haiti
Tuesday: Farmer, xi-xiv, 1-58
Thursday: Farmer, 59-120
*OUTLINE/BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE*
Week 9 (3/8/04-3/12/04): The Political-Economy of AIDS
Tuesday: Farmer, 121-190
Thursday: Farmer, 191-264
SPRING BREAK!
Week 10 (3/22/04-3/26/04): The Economics and Politics of U.S. Healthcare
Tuesday: Freund et al., 255-337
Thursday:
Week 11 (3/29/04-4/2/04): Ethnicity and Health
Tuesday: Santiago-Irizarry, 1-35
*ROUGH DRAFT OF RESEARCH PAPER DUE*
Thursday: Santiago-Irizarry, 36-87
Week 12 (4/5/04-4/9/04): Ethnicity and Health (cont.)
Tuesday: Santiago-Irizarry, 88-152
Thursday:
Week 13 (4/12/04-4/16/04): Culture Clash?
Tuesday: Fadiman, vii-ix, 3-77
Thursday: Fadiman, 78-153
Week 14 (4/19/04-4/23/04): Culture Clash? (cont.)
Tuesday: Fadiman, 154-224
Thursday: Fadiman, 225-290
*FINAL DRAFT OF RESEARCH PAPER DUE*
*Thursday, April 29, 9:00 a.m. – EXAM #2*