everything.study
STS.005

Data and Society

3-0-9 units. HASS-H · Undergraduate

Introduces students to the social, political, and ethical aspects of data science work. Designed to create reflective practitioners who are able to think critically about how collecting, aggregating, and analyzing data are social processes and processes that affect people.

Fall 2005 · Disease and Society in America

Topics

  • Introduction: Disease, Medicine, and Society
  • Health and Disease Before Columbus
  • Virgin Soil Epidemics
  • The Health of Colonists
  • Disease and the Environment
  • Urbanization and Public Health
  • The Decline of Tuberculosis
  • Epidemiological Transitions and Health Disparities
  • The Determinants of Health and Disease
  • Debate: Disease History and Health Policy
  • American Indian Medicine
  • Colonial Medical Theory and Practice
  • Inocutation and Vaccination
  • Self Help and Heroic Medicine
  • Medical Education
  • The Rise of Hospitals
  • Race, Gender, and Medicine
  • Psychiatry and Mental Health
  • Anesthesia and the Rise of Surgery
  • Germ Theory and the Therapeutic Revolution
  • Public Health Politics I: Plague in Chinatown
  • Medical Technology and the Modern Hospital
  • Specialization and Medical Education
  • Public Health Politics II: HIV/AIDS
  • Health Care Policy: Access and Cost
  • Disease and Society in the 21st Century

Readings

  • Rosenberg, Charles. The Cholera Years . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1968 , 1987. ISBN: 9780226726793.
    Listed reading
  • Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale . New York, NY: Knopf, 1990. ISBN: 9780394568447.
    Listed reading
  • Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine . New York, NY: Basic Books, 1984. ISBN: 9780465079353.
    Listed reading
  • Las Casas, Bartolomé de. The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account (1552) . Translated by Herma Briffault. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992, pp. 27-47. ISBN: 9780801844300.
    Listed reading
  • Leon-Portilla, Miguel, ed. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (1528?) . Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1992, pp. 70-102. ISBN: 9780807055014.
    Listed reading
  • Crosby, Alfred W. “Conquistador y Pestilencia.” In The Columbian exchange; biological and cultural consequences of 1492 . Westport, CT: Greenwood Pub. Co., 1972, pp. 35-63. ISBN: 9780837158211.
    Listed reading
  • Jones, David S. “Virgin Soils Revisited.” William and Mary Quarterly 60 (October 2003): 703-742.
    Listed reading
  • Wood, William. New England’s Prospect (1634) . Edited by Alden T. Vaughan. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977, pp. 25-31. ISBN: 9780870232268.
    Listed reading
  • Flint, Timothy. The History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley. To Which is Appended A Condensed Physical Geography of the Atlantic United States, and The Whole American Continent. 3rd ed. Vol I. Cincinnati, OH, E. Flint, MI, and Boston, MA: Carter, Hendee, and Co., 1833, pp. 35-40, 199-201, 223-224, 298-299, 331, and 407-408.
    Listed reading
  • Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. “Fear of Hot Climates in the Anglo-American Colonial Experience.” William and Mary Quarterly 41 (1984): 213-240.
    Listed reading
  • Valencius, Conevery Bolton. “The Geography of Health and the Making of the American West: Arkansas and Missouri, 1800-1860.” In Medical Geography in Historical Perspective. Edited by Nicolaas A. Rupke. London, UK: Wellcome Institute Trust for the History of Medicine, 2000, 2001, pp. 121-145. ISBN: 9780854840724.
    Listed reading
  • Pernick, Martin S. “Politics, Parties, and Pestilence: Epidemic Yellow Fever in Philadelphia and the Rise of the First Party System.” William and Mary Quarterly 29 (October 1972): 559-586.
    Listed reading
  • Rosenberg, Charles E. The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 . Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1968, pp. 2-98. ISBN: 9780226726793.
    Listed reading
  • Omran, Abdel R. “The Epidemiologic Transition: A Theory of the Epidemiology of Population Change.” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 49 (October 1971): 509-538.
    Listed reading
  • McKinlay, John B., and Sonja M. McKinlay. “The Questionable Contribution of Medical Measures to the Decline of Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century.” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly (Summer 1977): 405-428.
    Listed reading
  • Marmot, Michael G. “Social Differentials in Health Within and Between Populations.” Daedalus 123 (Fall 1994): 197-216.
    Listed reading
  • Wilkinson, Richard G. “The Epidemiological Transition: From Material Scarcity to Social Disadvantage?” Daedalus 123 (Fall 1994): 61-77.
    Listed reading
  • Josselyn, John. New-England’s Rarities: Discovered in the Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Serpents, and Plants of that Country [1672] . Edited by Edward Tuckerman. Boston, MA: William Veazie, 1865, pp. 31-35, 48-55, 71-84, and 151.
    Listed reading
  • Heckewelder, John. An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations, Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighbouring States . Philadelphia, PA, 1819, pp. 221-244.
    Listed reading
  • Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 . New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990, pp. 1-71. ISBN: 9780394568447.
    Listed reading
  • Blake, John B. “The Inoculation Controversy in Boston, 1721-1722.” New England Quarterly 25 (1952): 489-506.
    Listed reading
  • Kopperman, Paul. “‘Venerate the Lancet’: Benjamin Rush’s Yellow Fever Therapy in Context.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 78 (2004): 539-574.
    Listed reading
  • Louis, Pierre. Rechearches on the Effects of Bloodletting in Some Inflammatory Diseases . Boston, MA: C.G. Putnam, 1836, pp. 1-23, and 55-71.
    Listed reading
  • Drake, Daniel. Practical Essays on Medical Education and the Medical Profession in the United States . Cincinnati, OH: Roff and Young, 1832, pp. 5-19, and 45-59.
    Listed reading
  • Starr, Paul. The Social Transformation of American Medicine . New York, NY: Basic Books, 1984, pp. 30-59, and 79-112. ISBN: 9780465079353.
    Listed reading
  • Clarke, Edward H. Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for Girls . Boston, MA: James R. Osgood and Company, 1874, pp. 31-39, and 76-85.
    Listed reading
  • Jackson, Mercy Bisbee. “Sex and Education.” In Sex and Education . Edited by Julia Ward Howe. A Reply to Dr. E. H. Clarke’s Sex in Education . Boston, MA: Roberts Brothers, 1874, pp. 150-163.
    Listed reading
  • Jones, D. S. Rationalizing Epidemics: Meanings and Uses of American Indian Mortality since 1600 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004, pp. 118-144. ISBN: 9780674013056.
    Listed reading
  • Brandt, Allan M. “Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.” Hastings Center Report 8 (1978): 21-29.
    Listed reading
  • Pernick, Martin. “The Calculus of Suffering in 19th-Century Surgery.” Hastings Center Report 13 (April 1983): 26-36.
    Listed reading
  • “Discussion on the Advisability of the Registration of Tuberculosis.” In Transactions of the College of Physicians 16. Philadelphia, PA, 1894, pp. 1-27.
    Listed reading
  • Leavitt, Judith W. “‘Typhoid Mary’ Strikes Back: Bacteriological Theory and Practice in Early Twentieth-Century Public Health.” Isis 83 (1992): 608-629.
    Listed reading
  • Warner, John Harley. “From Specificity to Universalism in Medical Therapeutics: Transformation in the 19th-Century United States.” In Sickness and Health: Readings in the History of Medicine and Public Health . Edited by Judith Walzer Leavitt and Ronald L. Numbers. 3rd ed. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997, pp. 87-101. ISBN: 9780299153243.
    Listed reading
  • Carhart, J. W. “The Clinical Thermometer.” Medical and Surgical Reporter 72 (1895): 119-121.
    Listed reading
  • Herrick, James B. “Modern Diagnosis.” Journal of American Medical Association 92 (February 1929): 518-522.
    Listed reading
  • Evans, Hughes. “Losing Touch: The Controversy over the Introduction of Blood Pressure Instruments into Medicine.” Technology and Culture 34 (October 1993): 784-807.
    Listed reading
  • Greene, Jeremy. “Releasing the Flood Waters: Diuril and the Transformation of Hypertension.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 79 (Winter 2005). (Forthcoming)
    Listed reading
  • Beecher, Henry K. “The Powerful Placebo.” JAMA 159 (December 24, 1955): 1602-1606.
    Listed reading
  • Treichler, Paula. “AIDS, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse: An Epidemic of Signification.” Cultural Studies 1 (October 1987): 263-305.
    Listed reading
  • Specter, Michael. “ Higher Risk .” New Yorker 81 (23 May 2005). (Web version) ↗
    Listed reading
  • Jones, D. S., and A. M. Brandt. “AIDS, Historical.” In Encyclopedia of Microbiology. Edited by Joshua Lederberg. 2nd ed. Vol 1. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2000, pp. 104-115. ISBN: 0122268016.
    Listed reading
  • Brandt, Allan M. “The Cigarette, Risk, and American Culture.” Daedalus 119, no. 4 (Fall 1990): 155-176.
    Listed reading

Prerequisites & course information

Same subject as 11.155[J] , IDS.057[J] Prereq: None U (Spring) Not offered regularly; consult department 3-0-9 units. HASS-H

Sources