Instructor: Victor Braitberg & Hester Oberman
Mon & Wed | 12:30 PM - 1:45 PM | In-Person
Spring 2025
Required for the Health and Human Values minor, this course introduces students to methodological inquiry common to humanities, behavioral, and social sciences, with applications to science, medicine, and healthcare. Emphasizing critical thinking, abstract conceptual thinking, and comparative methods, the course explores various social scientific and humanistic approaches. Topics explored include cross-cultural concepts of the body, social and medical definitions of disability, interpretation of illness narratives, the social construction of illness and disease, and the ethical dimensions of patient-healer relationships. It also considers the role of race, class, and gender in disease disparities, and examines the political and economic forces that shape the organization and delivery of healthcare.