History 238cm - Colloquium: Topics in World History-Consumer Goods in the History and Practice of Medicine

Colq:T-ConsumerGoodsMedicine

Spring
2025
01
4.00
Christopher Rudeen

W 2:45 PM - 4:00 PM; M 3:05 PM - 4:20 PM

Smith College
HST-238cm-01-202503
Seelye 304
crudeen@smith.edu
This course investigates the interplay of consumerism and medicine through a series of medical objects, both in the present day and in the past. Medicine and capitalism are strongly linked in history, and this course uses objects to tease apart their relationship, paying special attention to the identity of patients and the provenance of objects. Do consumer goods further or inhibit the goals of medicine? Can medical objects advance the agency of marginalized people? And what makes something medical, anyway? Enrollment limited to 18. (E)
Permission is required for interchange registration during the add/drop period only.
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