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The analysis of the history of medicine offers a unique opportunity to witness shifts in cultural processes and social structures in North America. In the course of this semester we will study significant “American” medical events and their textual representations from the colonial era until today. The manifold bodily and medical contacts between English settlers and Native Americans in the 16th and 17th centuries mark the beginning of our exploration of the intersections between medicine, society, and culture in America. We will then discuss the reactions to smallpox immunization in the early 18th century and investigate the overlaps between a “heroic” medicine and the American Revolution. As the development of hygiene in the US shows, the germ theory of disease needs to be taken into account to illustrate the understanding of disease as a species that can be both universalized and fitted with particular national connotations and implications in the 19th century. The trend toward “medicalizing” certain aspects of US culture and society becomes increasingly pronounced during the twentieth century as racial and economic factors shape the course of medicine as a profession and as a social practice. In the last third of this course, we will look at how the AIDS crisis has brought about an “epidemic of signification” (Treichler) and how the recent medicalization of certain bodily conditions is represented in advertisements.
There will be a reader containing relevant reading material. |
