Sociology 219 - MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY

Fall
2016
01
4.00
Kathleen Hulton
MW 09:00-10:20
Smith College
20489-F16
HILLYR 103
khulton@smith.edu
This course analyzes-and at times challenges-the ways in which we understand health, illness and medicine. The course is divided in roughly three parts: first dealing with definitions and representations of health and illness; the second with the significance and impact of biomedical dominance; and the third with the intersections of health, illness and medicine with gender, race, social class and sexual orientation. The course encourages you to ask questions about the power exercised by various medical practitioners, and about the ways in which understandings of health and illness are neither natural nor neutral, but invested with culturally and historically specific meanings. Enrollment limited to 35. Prerequisite: SOC 101.
Permission is required for interchange registration during the add/drop period only.