Fall 2019:
Core Course
INTRODUCTION TO MEDICAL HUMANITIES
MDHM 201 Distribution Group I
Instructor: Mitchell, Beverly M.
Examines the history of medicine, concepts of disease vs illness, narrative medicine, health disparities, religion, spirituality, and the role of science and technology on the practices of healthcare. Students will develop skills in close reading, interpretation, historical contextualization, critical thinking. This course (formerly HURC 201) is required for the minor in Medical Humanities. Mutually Exclusive: Credit cannot be earned for both MDHM 201 and HURC 201. (View Registrar Listing)
Electives
MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
ANTH 381 Distribution Group II
Instructor: Mitchell, Beverly M.
Cultural, ecological, and biological perspectives on human health and disease throughout the world. Mutually Exclusive: Credit cannot be earned for both ANTH 381 and ANTH 581. (View Registrar Listing)
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF TOXICITY
ANTH 393
Instructor: Wool, Zoë H.
Through ethnographic, scientific, and personal accounts of toxicity in a range of sites—from warzones to office buildings—this course explores toxicity as an analytic that helps us think critically about health and sovereignty. We explore the way that colonial geographies imprint geographies of toxicity and the ways that capitalism and consumption produce and distribute toxicity. In relation to health, we explore the ways that the materiality and biology of toxic exposure are embodied in specific ways that undermine singular or universalizable concepts and measures of human and environmental health and require us to think about the health in relation to the specificities of race, class, gender, disability, and intimacy in particular places and times. In relation to sovereignty, we explore the ways that the promiscuous movement of toxicants provokes but also eludes regulations that hew to the ridged boundaries of law and territory and raise new questions of accountability and evidence. Graduate/Undergraduate Equivalency: ANTH 593. Mutually Exclusive: Cannot register for ANTH 393 if student has credit for ANTH 593. (View Registrar Listing)
LITERATURE AND MEDICINE
ENGL 272 Distribution Group I
Instructor: Woudstra, Els W.
Designed for, but not limited to, students interested in the medical profession, this course introduces the study of medicine through reading imaginative literature--novels, plays, essays, poems--by and about doctors and patients, focusing on understanding ethical issues and on developing critical and interpretive skills. (View Registrar Listing)
GERMAN FILM (IN ENGLISH)
GERM 335
Instructor: Blumenthal-Barby, Martin
The course explores filmic representations of communities, their complex mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, their inevitable dynamics of otherness, as well as practices of modern states toward communal regulation and control. While communities biologically denote the interaction of organisms sharing an environment, we will examine the practices of power that states wield toward the maximization of “life.” Hence the questions of biopower, health politics, eugenics, sexism, racism, and genocide. How do films negotiate the precarious politics of communal life, what are their strategies for resistance, and what their moments of complicity? We will explore how film reflects communal life in twentieth-century German history, but also, and perhaps primarily, how film responds to that history by generating its own speaking power and mobilizing its own political force. Taught in English. (View Registrar Listing)
DISPARITIES IN HEALTH IN AMERICA
HEAL 380
Instructor: Diep, Cassandra S.
This course explores the aspects of race and ethnicity that influence health, public health policy, and the management and practice of healthcare, as well as, the trends which drive ethnic demographic transition including an aging white population, declining white birth rate, immigration of non-whites, and the higher birth rate of minority groups. Mutually Exclusive: Credit cannot be earned for both HEAL 380 and HEAL 580. (View Registrar Listing)
THE BODY IN GLOBAL HISTORIES OF MEDICINE
HIST 238
Instructor: Lan A. Li
This class introduces how people in different parts of the world have understood why we get sick and how we get better. How did the "same" body look so different to different people? To answer this question, we will look at medical histories across a diverse range of perspectives. Though some of these practices may look familiar, such as Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda (Hindu-based medical practice in India), others have been forgotten, such as Galenic medicine. Yet, they have shaped modern medicine and science in a number of surprising ways. (View Registrar Listing)
BIOMEDICAL APPROACH TO HISTORY
HIST 312 Distribution Group I
Instructor: Lopez Alonso, Moramay
This is a course in history of medicine, diseases and public health, demography, and nutrition. It delves on classic works on the history of human societies. It will also use historical studies from particular disciplines such as biology, demography, medicine, nutrition, anthropology, and economic concentrating around disease, medicine and public health. (View Registrar Listing)
THE HUMANITIES OF CARE & END OF LIFE
HURC 361/RELI 361 Distribution Group I
Instructor: Brennan, Marcia G.
Pairing the perspectives of medicine, bioethics, and the medical humanities with thematic case studies in art, literature, cinema, and visual culture, the class examines the humanities of care and the end of life. (View Registrar Listing)
TOPICS IN MEDICAL ETHICS
PHIL 336
Instructor:
A philosophical examination of some of the fundamental issues in clinical ethics, including informed consent, competency, confidentiality, end of life decision making, the definition of death, allocating scarce medical resources, and the role of economic analysis in clinical decision making. Readings drawn from the clinical and philosophical literature. Effective May 15, 2019, this course does not carry D1 credit. Mutually Exclusive: Credit cannot be earned for both PHIL 336 and PHIL 536. (View Registrar Listing)
GENDER AND HEALTH
SOCI 465
Instructor: Gorman, Bridget K.
This seminar explores the relationship between gender and health (longevity, physical illness and functioning, mental health, and health behavior). Specific topics include masculinity, disease expression, medical research, health care use, stress and social relationships, and intersectionality (race/ethnicity and sexuality) as they relate shaping health outcomes among men and women. Mutually Exclusive: Credit cannot be earned for both SOCI 465 and SOCI 665. (View Registrar Listing)
Practica
HHASS Medical Humanities Practicum 1 (1 YR SEQUENCE)
MDHM 402
Instructor: Mitchell, Beverly M.
Humanities and social science students are matched with medical humanities research projects in TMC. Students conduct research under guidance of on-site supervisor and follow curriculum under guidance of Rice faculty, developing skills for careers after graduation. Yearlong sequence continues as MDHM 403 in spring. Mutually Exclusive: Credit cannot be earned for both MDHM 402 and HUMA 402. (See Registrar's listing)
HHASS 1-semester Medical Humanities Practicum
MDHM 430
Instructor: Mulligan, John
This research-based course is conducted in partnership with health institutions in Houston. Qualified and advanced students work 10 hours/week on site with health professionals, archivists, center directors, and others to develop projects in specific research areas. Students meet regularly with instructor to discuss research and to present work at an end of semester symposium. (See Registrar's listing)