Courses under this number involve pursuing graduate study in substantive sociological subfields. The courses presume familiarity with the fields of study. Consult departmental catalog for current descriptions.

This course explores the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that shape practices of and experiences with medicine. This course combines canonical texts with the latest research in medical sociology to provide students with a firm grounding in the history of field and a sense of what questions occupy researchers today. In this course we will survey a wide range of medical sociology topics, including medical institutions and systems, medical organizations and interactions, medical education and professions, patient identity and activism, health governance and citizenship, medical markets and consumerism, and medical knowledge and uncertainty. By the end of the course students should understand, for example, what economic forces led to the formation and then end of the midcentury “Golden Age of Doctoring,” how patients and providers co-construct medical authority in interactions, and what it means that the social determinants of health became a diagnostic category. This course includes readings on health and medicine from around the globe but focuses on the US healthcare context.

Repeat Rules