This course explores the history and social meaning of medicine, medical practice, health care, and disease in the United States from 1600 to the present.

This course explores the history and social meaning of medicine, medical practice, health care, and disease in the United States from 1600 to the present.

This course provides history majors with an introduction to the philosophy of history, historical methodology, and general schools of historiography. We will consider how historians inside and outside the academy pose questions, and how they find, select, evaluate, interpret, and analyze evidence in order to propose answers to those questions. Finally, we will reflect as well upon questions about the purposes and goals of both studying and writing history.

Why have ordinary Latin Americans joined social movements, often at high personal risk? How and when have those movements achieved their goals, and what common obstacles have they faced? What factors have influenced the forms and strategies that movements adopt? This course surveys the history of Latin American and Caribbean social movements from the late nineteenth century to the present day, seeking to identify key patterns and lessons in the process.

Why have poverty and inequality proven so persistent in modern Latin American history? What strategies have people proposed to deal with these problems, and with what consequences?

Why have poverty and inequality proven so persistent in modern Latin American history? What strategies have people proposed to deal with these problems, and with what consequences?

Why have poverty and inequality proven so persistent in modern Latin American history? What strategies have people proposed to deal with these problems, and with what consequences?

Public historians--whether they work in museums, archives, historic sites, historic preservation firms or agencies, federal offices or elsewhere--take historical insight cultivated in traditional academic arenas and apply them in a wide range of public settings.