War, Medicine, Care 20th21stC

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This is an interdisciplinary course blending the study of visual and textual narrative, history, ethics, medicine, and war studies. A survey of how care – medical, psychiatric, and nursing – has been delivered during wartime over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with an emphasis on the narratives written by nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, field medics, orderlies, ambulance drivers, and doctors in the conflicts. We will examine how politics infiltrates the war hospital and affects care; the changing dynamic of women and men in the medical (and battle) field throughout the twentieth century; the innovations that emerged from battle surgery; humanitarian concerns on the front line where friend and foe are blurred; and more. Texts will include but not be limited to film, sitcom, novels, memoirs, letters, diary entries, posters, and poetry. The conflicts we study will be the major conflicts of the last century from an American perspective, and they vary in duration and intensity. They include: World War I (including the 1918 Flu Pandemic and the after-effects of the 1916 Easter Rising), the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Operation Desert Storm or the First Gulf War, and the current American-led conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Innovations in medical treatments for soldiers and other war injured are often responding to innovations in war technology, and we will trace the changing killing technology that resulted in different injuries that tend to be linked to these conflicts as a result. The focus in this course will be English speaking doctors and nurses in Western conflicts such as World War I or conflicts that involved Anglo-speakers, such as the Korean War and the Vietnam War; however, students are welcome to pursue other conflicts for their final research project. While American doctors and nurses will be centered in our study, I make a concerted effort to include experiences, observations, and perspectives from Irish, Australian, New Zealand, Scottish, Canadian, and other English-speaking medical professionals involved in the conflicts, or stories about them.