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Aug 31, 2025
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Fall 2025 Health Sciences Catalog
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HCB 513 - Disease and Society
What is disease? How do the beliefs, politics, and economies of particular societies shape how diseases are defined, experienced, and treated? In this seminar, students will explore these questions by analyzing historical documents, scientific reports, and historical scholarship. We will look at disease from multiple perspectives as a biological process, clinical entity, population phenomenon, historical actor, and personal experience. We will pay special attention to how diseases have been recognized, diagnosed, named, classified and counted in different times, places, cultures, and settings based on different environmental and social conditions, medical ideas, diagnostic technologies, and available treatments. The course will begin with a review of major approaches to understanding the manifold relationships between disease and society. The remainder of the course will view disease and society relationships through the lens of specific issues, such as epidemic disease, consumption and affluence, globalization, and risk.
3 credits
Grading Letter graded (A, A-, B+, etc.)
Offered Offered in Fall
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