300-400 level courses are on special topics and are more advanced. They often presuppose some basic knowledge in the field and should be more difficult courses than courses at the 1-199 levels. The department is trying to insure that some 400 level courses, although substantially more difficult, are also small in size; they thus may be suitable for graduate students.
HIST 471 Medicine and Development
Taught as schedule allows (consult the Course Directory)
R | SEM
This course includes readings and research on how medicine relates to the process of development in resource-poor countries. The first eight weeks of the semester are taken up with a combination of readings and research planning. The remainder of the semester is given over to the development and presentation of research projects. Students are expected not only to complete their own projects, but also to participate as consultants in the research of others.
Readings will include studies of the relationship between poverty and health, studies of particular diseases and efforts to eradicate them, discussions of gender and health priorities, and debates over the proper balance between economic growth and health initiatives in poor countries.
We will also look at searching critiques of the entire development process. James Ferguson, in The Anti-Politics Machine, for example, argues that the role of technical expertise in development planning is to remove fundamental political issues from the democratic process, and to make them technical questions that are outside politics.
Students will have the opportunity to shape, develop, and complete their own research projects. Research methods, problems, and results, will be discussed in class all through the semester
This course meets the capstone research requirement in health and societies.
Course Syllabus (PDF)
