Course Descriptions
Culture, Communication and Ethics in Health Care: Deaf and Disability Studies Approaches - 3 credits
Rebecca Garden, Ph.D.
Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, SUNY Upstate Medical University
This course provides a model for collaborative and culturally sensitive and skilled communication in health care. Through the study of ethics cases, narratives, and literature, students will analyze disparities and discrimination in health care for people who are deaf and disabled.
Culture and Mental Disorder - 3 credits
John Townsend, Ph.D.
Anthropology, Syracuse University
Mental disorders viewed as illnesses or social constructions. Cross-cultural variation and universals. Western and non-Western methods of treatment. Additional work required of graduate students.
Culture and Reproductive Health and Medicine - 3 credits
Sandra Lane, Ph.D.
Public Health, Falk College, Syracuse University
This course examines diverse ways in which societies throughout the globe view and manage human reproduction and the implications this has for health care and medicine. The emphasis will be primarily, though not exclusively, on women’s reproductive health throughout the life cycle, including puberty, sex, pregnancy, family planning, childbirth, infertility, and menopause. The course also explores changes in reproductive health care in the context of globalization and considers how an understanding of the influence of culture on reproductive health is crucial for the development of international public health policy and practice.
Disability, Food, and Health - 3 credits
Katherine McDonald, Ph.D., FAAIDD
Public Health, Falk College, Syracuse University
This course covers major theories, historical events, law, services, and research related to health and wellness for persons with disabilities including disparities, health promotion, ethics, aging, violence, and disaster preparedness.
Disability, Medicine, and Representation - 3 credits
Rebecca Garden, Ph.D.
Department of PUblic Health and Preventive Medicine, SUNY Upstate Medical University
This course aims to bring disability and medicine into cross-disciplinary dialogue by examining representations of disability and medicine in film, literature, and medical texts on disability. These texts and conventions are considered in light of critical discussions of representation and disability. The "medicalization" of disability is examined, with students invited to explore disability and ability as cultural representations, wherein bodily abilities and limitations are conditioned by subjective perceptions of “normalcy.” A principal question is how to incorporate a “social model” of disability into medical/clinical education and practice. Disability studies scholars and clinicians working on disability will be guest speakers.
First Person: Narratives of Illness, Disability, and Identity - 3 credits
Rebecca Garden, Ph.D.
Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, SUNY Upstate Medical University
This course explores first-person narratives of illness and disability, especially in light of other forms of social difference, such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and class. Using tools of literary analysis and cultural criticism, students come together from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds to examine the experiences of writers with AIDS, autism, cancer, hepatitis, and multiple sclerosis. Students consider ethical and social issues such as doctor/patient relationships, caregiver relations, questions of control, authority, appearance, and “normalcy” and the role of empathy and emotion in medicine and healing.
Global Health - 3 credits
Sandra Lane, Ph.D.
Public Health, Falk College, Syracuse University
This course examines global health from an anthropological perspective. It explores how culture affects people's experience and response to morbidity and mortality. Topics considered include gender and health, reproductive health, infectious disease, health and inequality and health and war.
Health Promotion: Disability - 3 credits
Katherine McDonald, Ph.D., FAAIDD
Public Health, Falk College, Syracuse University
This course covers the factors influencing the health and well-being of persons with disability, including models of disability, disability history, law and services, health disparities, health promotion, ethics, violence, and disaster preparedness.
Medical Anthropology in Ecological Perspectives - 3 credits
John Townsend, Ph.D.
Anthropology, Syracuse University
The fundamental tenets of health care delivery are analyzed and the concepts of "health," "illness," "patient," "cure," and "efficiency" are explored. Western medical practices are compared to practices in other cultures; implicit premises and deficiencies in western medicine are highlighted. Topics include analysis of status and roles in hospitals; socialization into the culture of medicine; magical curing; economic barriers to better health care; problems introducing western medicine into alien cultures; and the patient’s role.
Public Health Ethics - 3 credits
Sandra Lane, Ph.D.
Public Health, Falk College, Syracuse University
This course addresses ethical issues in public health. Public health ethics is a new area of scholarship and practice that addresses population-level health issues, including issues such as food stamps and health insurance, immunizations, public health research, legal and policy responses to infectious diseases and epidemics, and the role of religious and social values in setting health policy.