Latino Health: Social, Cultural, and Scientific Perspectives

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course will examine the health of Latinos in South Bend from an interdisciplinary perspective drawing on biology, medicine and cultural anthropology. We will consider both the scientific bases of specific diseases affecting Latinos and the social, cultural, economic and environmental factors that increase risk and limit access to therapy. We will discuss topics such as antimicrobial resistance, chronic illnesses, labor-related afflictions, mental health and the effects of climate change on Latino well-being. We take seriously subjects' holistic, embodied understandings of suffering and their pragmatic quest for treatment across a pluralistic continuum from curanderismo to biomedicine. A critical analysis of health injustice and ways to cure this systemic dis-ease guide our class research, seminar discussions and scholarly goals.