Abena Dove Osseo-Asare

How do societies understand illness, and how do they restore good health? In this course, we explore how communities have confronted disease throughout Africa’s history. During the first six weeks, we read about the changing role of specialist healers since the 1700s, including shamans, malams, nurses, and drug peddlers. The second half of the course turns to the history of specific health concerns and diseases including coronavirus, ebola, malaria, reproductive health, and AIDS through regional case studies. Particular emphasis is placed on pre-colonial healing, medical education, colonial therapeutics, and the impact of environmental change.

This course offers participants a nuanced, historical perspective on the current health crisis in Africa. Staggering figures place the burden of global disease in Africa; not only AIDS and malaria, but also pneumonia, diarrhea and mental illness significantly affect the lives of everyday people. Studying the history of illness and healing in African societies provides a framework with which to interpret the social, political, and environmental factors shaping international health today.

This course introduces major themes in the history of medicine through the lens of disease. It focuses on two questions: How have people defined well-being? How have they responded to illness? The course considers major diseases to understand their multiple meanings across time and space including: AIDS, Chagas Disease, Cholera, Coronavirus, Ebola, Influenza, Malaria, Plague, PTSD and Sleeping Sickness. Themes to be considered include changing theories of disease causality, the development of international public health policy, social understandings of the body, and the growth of the pharmaceutical industry. The course emphasizes the roles governments, medical practitioners, and patients play in the social construction of disease and health. Case studies from India, Brazil, South Africa and the United States will be analyzed through readings, lectures and films.

This course examines histories of Africa and travel through eyewitness accounts. Course participants will study journeys Africans have made within and from the continent alongside accounts of travelers visiting Africa from elsewhere. These travelers included migrant laborers, market women, Peace Corps volunteers, enslaved individuals, soldiers, political activists, adopted children, and religious evangelists since the 18th century.

 The course readings and films focus on different groups of travelers in a number of time periods.

 Some of the guiding questions we will consider:

    How did people experience the movement of their bodies from one location to another?

    How has ‘Africa’ taken on different meanings for our travelers?

    What do their narratives indicate about changing conceptions of ethnicity, migration, tourism, citizenship, and the environment in different time periods?

    And how did shifts in medical, transportation, and communication technologies shape their journeys?

This survey course is an introduction to the study of Africa's past through the story of urbanization. It begins with an overview of African cities around 1500—a time of increasing human migration and global trade. It considers the diversity of early African politics, religion, and family life through regional case studies. Special attention is afforded the social upheaval that came in the wake of the intercontinental slave trade and related growth of African city states.

The second half of the course addresses African cities in the modern period, focusing on the advent of European colonialism in the 1800s and its aftermath. Major themes include: everyday life under imperial rule, healing and religion, African nationalism, and development theories. The course concludes with historical dilemmas in contemporary Africa including immigration, the AIDS crisis, and transitions to democratic rule. Students will select an African city to study through independent research projects. Open to non-majors. This course satisfies History department pre-1800 requirement for history majors.

Readings chosen from:

1)        “The Epic of Sara,” narrated by Sira Mori Jabaté and “The Epic of Askia-Mohammed,” narrated by Nouhou Malio (1997) from Oral Epics from Africa: Vibrant Voices from a Vast Continent , edited by Johnson, Hale and Belcher (Indiana University Press)

2)        O. M. Dalton (1903), “Note on an Unusually Fine Bronze Figure from Benin,” Man Nos. 104-05

3)        Kate Ezra (1992), excerpts from Royal Art of Benin (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

4)        Robert Farris Thompson and Joseph Cornet (1981), excerpts from The Four Moments of the Sun: Kongo Art in Two Worlds (National Gallery of Art, Washington)

5)        Ibn Battuta (1931), “The East African Coast”  reprinted in Ibn Battatuta in Black Africa (Princeton: Mark Wiener Publishers, 1998)

6)        Mark Dummet (2006), “India: Africans Absorbed,” BBC Focus on Africa Magazine, Oct-Dec

7)        Apolo Kagwa (1971), excerpts from The Kings of Buganda (Nairobi: East African Publishing House)

8)        Richard N. Hall (1905), “The Great Zimbabwe and Other Ancient Ruins in Rhodesia,” Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 4, No. 15

9)        Peter Garlake (1982), from Great Zimbabwe Described and Explained (Harare, Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe Publishing House)

10)      Andrew B. Smith (1993), from The Khoikhoi at the Cape of Good Hope: Seventeenth-century Drawings in the South Afrian Library (Cape Town: South African Library)

11)      David Livingstone (1912), from Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (London: John Murray)

12)      Hilaire Belloc (1898), from The Modern Traveller (London)

13)      E. D. Morel (1919), from Red Rubber; the Story of the Rubber Slave Trade which Flourished on the Congo for Twenty Years, 1890–1910 (Manchester, UK: National Labour Press)

14)      Adam Hochschild (1998), “The Wood that Weeps” from King Leopold's Ghost: a Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (NY: Mariner Books)

15)      Albert Schweitzer (1933), from Out of My Life and Thought, an Autobiography (NY: Henry Holt and Company)

16)      Nancy Rose Hunt (1999), “Dining and Surgery”, from A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization and Mobility in the Congo (Duke University Press)

17)      Jomo Kenyatta (1938), “The Gikuyu System of Land Tenure” from Facing Mount Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu (London: Secker and Warburg)

18)      Wambi Waiyaki Otieno (1998), “Early Days in the Mau Mau Movement” from Mau Mau’s Daughter: A Life History (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers)

19)      Caroline Elkins (2005), “Britain’s Assault on Mau Mau” from Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britian’s Gulag in Kenya (NY: Henry Holt and Co.)

20)      Excerpts from Safari: The Tourist Magazine for East Africa Jan/Feb 1973, vol. 3 no.10.

21)      Henry Kyemba (1977), from A State of Blood: the Inside Story of Idi Amin  (NY: Ace Books)

22)      Newspaper articles (1972) from Ugandan Asian Expulsion: 90 Days and Beyond through the Eyes of the International Press, compiled by Z. Lalani (Expulsion Publications)

23)      Marie Béatrice Umutesi (2004), “Descent into Hell,” in Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (Univ. of Wisconsin Press)

24)      Julie Flint and Alex de Waal (2005), “The Janjawiid” from Darfur: A Short History of a Long War (London, NY, Cape Town: Zed Books)

25)      (1978) “Africa: Family Planning Acceptable for Spacing, Not to End Childbearing,” International Family Planning Perspectives and Digest, Vol. 4, No. 3

26)      R.T. Ravenholdt (1968), “The A.I.D. Population and Family Planning Program—Goals, Scope, and Progress,” Demography Vol. 5, No. 2

27)      Sam Mhlongo (2001), “Aids and poverty,” New African

28)      Andrew M. Ivaska (2004), “ ’Anti-mini Militants Meet Modern Misses’: Urban Style, Gender, and the Politics of ‘National Culture’ in 1960s Dar es Salaam, Tanzania” from Fashioning Africa: Power and Politics of Dress (Indiana Univ Press)

29)      Fela Kuti (1982), “The Birth of Kalakuta Republic;” “The Reunion;” “My Second Marriage;” “My Mother’s Death: ‘Coffin for Head of State;’ ” from Fela Fela: this bitch of a life (London: Alison & Busby)

Course Requirements:

Writing Exercise #1                                         (15 points)

Writing Exercise #2                                         (15 points)

Writing Exercise #3 + Presentation                (20 points)

Map Quiz                                                        (5 points)

Exam                                                              (25 points)

How do societies understand illness, and how do they restore good health? In this course, we explore how communities have confronted disease throughout Africa’s history. During the first six weeks, we read about the changing role of specialist healers since the 1700s, including shamans, malams, nurses, and drug peddlers. The second half of the course turns to the history of specific health concerns and diseases including malaria, reproductive health, and AIDS through regional case studies. Particular emphasis is placed on pre-colonial healing, medical education, colonial therapeutics, and the impact of environmental change.

This course offers participants a nuanced, historical perspective on the current health crisis in Africa. Staggering figures place the burden of global disease in Africa; not only AIDS and malaria, but also pneumonia, diarrhea and mental illness significantly affect the lives of everyday people. Studying the history of illness and healing in African societies provides a framework with which to interpret the social, political, and environmental factors shaping international health today.

How have medical ideas moved across time and space? In this course, we consider the making of medical knowledge since the 1500s. Readings and course materials consider different ways to conceptualize empires and diasporas to show overlapping arenas for medical authority.  Case studies include the circulation of materia medica within the British, Spanish, and Dutch empires, the contest between Ayurveda and biomedicine in South Asian diasporas, the movement of African medical knowledge during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the globalization of Chinese traditional medicine, and research on genetic diseases within populations. Additional topics include bioprospecting for new drugs, birthing practices, globalization of clinical studies, and the spread of injections and vaccines. Course participants will gain a deep historical background in world history of medicine and global health. A primary goal of the course is to show points of connection between biomedicine and other healing traditions.

This course examines histories of Africa and travel through eyewitness accounts. Course participants will study journeys Africans have made within and from the continent alongside accounts of travelers visiting Africa from elsewhere. These travelers included migrant laborers, market women, Peace Corps volunteers, enslaved individuals, soldiers, political activists, adopted children, and religious evangelists since the 18th century.

 The course readings and films focus on different groups of travelers in a number of time periods.

 Some of the guiding questions we will consider:

    How did people experience the movement of their bodies from one location to another?

    How has ‘Africa’ taken on different meanings for our travelers?

    What do their narratives indicate about changing conceptions of ethnicity, migration, tourism, citizenship, and the environment in different time periods?

    And how did shifts in medical, transportation, and communication technologies shape their journeys?

The field of drug history allows us to learn about societies through their shifting relationships to pharmacological substances. In this seminar, we will focus on the multiple histories of major drugs including: Opium, Cocaine, Tobacco, Oral Contraceptives, Khat, Kola, and Viagra.

We will trace stories of each substance across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas using articles, historical texts, novels and films. Seminar participants will gain a comparative perspective on how societies regulate, discover, test, and market legal and illegal drugs over time, and how these multiple approaches overlap and inform one another. We will emphasize new research in history of medicine, anthropology, film studies, and public policy that suggests a theoretical framework for further investigations.

How do societies understand illness, and how do they restore good health? In this course, we explore how communities have confronted disease throughout Africa’s history. During the first six weeks, we read about the changing role of specialist healers since the 1700s, including shamans, malams, nurses, and drug peddlers. The second half of the course turns to the history of specific health concerns and diseases including malaria, reproductive health, and AIDS through regional case studies. Particular emphasis is placed on pre-colonial healing, medical education, colonial therapeutics, and the impact of environmental change.

This course offers participants a nuanced, historical perspective on the current health crisis in Africa. Staggering figures place the burden of global disease in Africa; not only AIDS and malaria, but also pneumonia, diarrhea and mental illness significantly affect the lives of everyday people. Studying the history of illness and healing in African societies provides a framework with which to interpret the social, political, and environmental factors shaping international health today.

This course introduces major themes in the history of medicine through the lens of disease. It focuses on two questions: How have people defined well-being? How have they responded to illness? The course considers major diseases to understand their multiple meanings across time and space including: Ebola, AIDS, malaria, plague, cholera, influenza, sleeping sickness, Chagas Disease, and PTSD. Themes to be considered include changing theories of disease causality, the development of international public health policy, social understandings of the body, and the growth of the pharmaceutical industry. The course emphasizes the roles governments, medical practitioners, and patients play in the social construction of disease and health. Case studies from India, Brazil, South Africa and the United States will be analyzed through readings, lectures and films.


Course Goals:

Primarily, this course aims to equip participants with tools for reading and researching about the past. Further, it provides a useful introduction to medical history across cultures for those considering a career in medicine or public health. It shows how people define illness according to particular social and cultural categories overtime. Through specific case studies, the course provides participants with an historical framework to interpret current debates in health policy and disease management.

Fabric is at the heart of cultural production in African spaces. From birth, to initiations, to weddings, to funerals, fabric binds together communities, adorning families, and providing the basis for personal wealth. This course explores emerging research on the social history of textiles and clothing, with special reference to cases in Africa and comparative work in South Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. It seeks to integrate this work with ongoing debates in the field of science and technology studies on innovation, and technology transfer and appropriation. Through the lens of fabric, we will examine the meanings of diaspora, empire, modernity, postcolonialism and globalization for everyday people. Case material address the history behind fibers, dyes, weaving, and construction techniques, as well as issues of industrialization, intellectual property rights, sustainability, and global fashion. Course participants will also learn to “read” fabrics, clothing, and textile technologies for historical information through museum and field visits.

Allman, J. M. (2004). Fashioning Africa: power and the politics of dress.  Bloomington, Indiana University

Press. 978-0253216892

Boateng, B. (2011). The copyright thing doesn't work here: Adinkra and Kente cloth and intellectual

property in Ghana . Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. 978-0816670031

Byfield, J. A. (2002). The bluest hands: a social and economic history of women dyers in Abeokuta

(Nigeria),1890-1940 . Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann. 978-0325070087

*Gott, E. S. and K. Loughran (2010). Contemporary African fashion . Bloomington, IN, Indiana University

Press. 978-0253222565 (optional)

Hansen, K. T. (2000). Salaula: the world of secondhand clothing and Zambia . Chicago, University of

Chicago Press. 978-0226315812

McKinley, C.E. (2011). Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World . New York, Bloomsbury.

978-1608195886

*Shell, Hanna Rose (2012) Hide and Seek: Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance

(Zone) (optional)

Contributions to Class Discussions .................................................................................... 40%

Short Research Paper ................ ....................................................................................... 30%

Presentations..................................................................................................................... 10%

Response Papers............................................................................................................... 10%

Bibliographic Database........................................................................................................ 10%

Please check back for updates.

How do societies understand illness, and how do they restore good health? In this course, we explore how communities have confronted disease throughout Africa’s history. During the first six weeks, we read about the changing role of specialist healers since the 1700s, including shamans, malams, nurses, and drug peddlers. The second half of the course turns to the history of specific health concerns and diseases including malaria, reproductive health, and AIDS through regional case studies. Particular emphasis is placed on pre-colonial healing, medical education, colonial therapeutics, and the impact of environmental change.

This course offers participants a nuanced, historical perspective on the current health crisis in Africa. Staggering figures place the burden of global disease in Africa; not only AIDS and malaria, but also pneumonia, diarrhea and mental illness significantly affect the lives of everyday people. Studying the history of illness and healing in African societies provides a framework with which to interpret the social, political, and environmental factors shaping international health today.

Timothy Burke

Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Duke, 1996)

Steven Feierman, John M. Janzen

The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (California, 1992)

Nancy Rose Hunt

A colonial lexicon: Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo

(Duke, 1999)

John Illiffe

The African AIDS Epidemic: A History

(Ohio, 2006)

Maryinez Lyons,

The Colonial Disease: A Social History of Sleeping Sickness in Northern Zaire, 1900-1940

(Cambridge, 2002)

Malidoma Patrice Some

Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman (Penguin Books, 1995)

Course participants will make two oral and written reports on weekly assignments. There will also be one longer research paper (12-15 pages) on the history of a particular health concern.

This course examines histories of Africa and travel through eyewitness accounts. Course participants will study journeys Africans have made within and from the continent alongside accounts of travelers visiting Africa from elsewhere. These travelers included migrant laborers, market women, Peace Corps volunteers, enslaved individuals, soldiers, political activists, adopted children, and religious evangelists since the 18th century.

 The course readings and films focus on different groups of travelers in a number of time periods.

 Some of the guiding questions we will consider:

    How did people experience the movement of their bodies from one location to another?

    How has ‘Africa’ taken on different meanings for our travelers?

    What do their narratives indicate about changing conceptions of ethnicity, migration, tourism, citizenship, and the environment in different time periods?

    And how did shifts in medical, transportation, and communication technologies shape their journeys?

The field of drug history allows us to learn about societies through their shifting relationships to pharmacological substances. In this seminar, we will focus on the multiple histories of major drugs including: Opium, Cocaine, Oral Contraceptives, Khat, Kola, and Viagra.

In this reading seminar, we will trace stories of each substance across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas using articles, historical texts, novels and films. Seminar participants will gain a comparative perspective on how societies regulate, discover, test, and market legal and illegal drugs over time, and how these multiple approaches overlap and inform one another. We will emphasize new research in history of medicine, anthropology, film studies, and public policy that suggests a theoretical framework for further investigations.

Texts:

The Opium Clerk

Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman

Leaf of Allah: Khat and Agricultural Transformation in Harerge Ethiopia 1875-1991

Kola is God's Gift

My Cocaine Museum

On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950-1970

Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease

Media/Films

Classic Narcotics Propaganda Films (1940s-70s)

TRAFFIK (the British miniseries)

Traffic (the film)

Maria Full of Grace

The Constant Gardener

Grading:

Contributions to Class Discussions .................................................................................... 40%

Short Research Paper ................ .......................................................................................30%

Presentations.....................................................................................................................10%

Response Papers...............................................................................................................10%

Bibliographic Database........................................................................................................10%

Medicine in African History

How do societies understand illness, and how do they restore good health? In this course, we explore how communities have confronted disease throughout Africa’s history. During the first six weeks, we read about the changing role of specialist healers since the 1700s, including shamans, malams, nurses, and drug peddlers. The second half of the course turns to the history of specific health concerns and diseases including malaria, reproductive health, and AIDS through regional case studies. Particular emphasis is placed on pre-colonial healing, medical education, colonial therapeutics, and the impact of environmental change.

This course offers participants a nuanced, historical perspective on the current health crisis in Africa. Staggering figures place the burden of global disease in Africa; not only AIDS and malaria, but also pneumonia, diarrhea and mental illness significantly affect the lives of everyday people. Studying the history of illness and healing in African societies provides a framework with which to interpret the social, political, and environmental factors shaping international health today.

Texts:

Timothy Burke

Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Duke, 1996)

Steven Feierman, John M. Janzen

The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (California, 1992)

Nancy Rose Hunt

A colonial lexicon: Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo

(Duke, 1999)

John Illiffe

The African AIDS Epidemic: A History

(Ohio, 2006)

Maryinez Lyons,

The Colonial Disease: A Social History of Sleeping Sickness in Northern Zaire, 1900-1940

(Cambridge, 2002)

Malidoma Patrice Some

Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman (Penguin Books, 1995)

Grading:

Course participants will make two oral and written reports on weekly assignments. There will also be one longer research paper (12-15 pages) on the history of a particular health concern.

Material Culture in Africa

Fabric is at the heart of cultural production in African spaces. From birth, to initiations, to weddings, to funerals, fabric binds together communities, adorning families, and providing the basis for personal wealth. This course explores emerging research on the social history of textiles and clothing, with special reference to cases in Africa and comparative work in South Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. It seeks to integrate this work with ongoing debates in the field of science and technology studies on innovation, and technology transfer and appropriation. Through the lens of fabric, we will examine the meanings of diaspora, empire, modernity, postcolonialism and globalization for everyday people. Case material address the history behind fibers, dyes, weaving, and construction techniques, as well as issues of industrialization, intellectual property rights, sustainability, and global fashion. Course participants will also learn to “read” fabrics, clothing, and textile technologies for historical information through museum and field visits.

Texts:

Allman, J. M. (2004). Fashioning Africa: power and the politics of dress.  Bloomington, Indiana University

Press. 978-0253216892

Boateng, B. (2011). The copyright thing doesn't work here: Adinkra and Kente cloth and intellectual

property in Ghana . Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. 978-0816670031

Byfield, J. A. (2002). The bluest hands: a social and economic history of women dyers in Abeokuta

(Nigeria),1890-1940 . Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann. 978-0325070087

*Gott, E. S. and K. Loughran (2010). Contemporary African fashion . Bloomington, IN, Indiana University

Press. 978-0253222565 (optional)

Hansen, K. T. (2000). Salaula: the world of secondhand clothing and Zambia . Chicago, University of

Chicago Press. 978-0226315812

McKinley, C.E. (2011). Indigo: In Search of the Color that Seduced the World . New York, Bloomsbury.

978-1608195886

*Shell, Hanna Rose (2012) Hide and Seek: Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance

(Zone) (optional)

Grading:

Contributions to Class Discussions .................................................................................... 40%

Short Research Paper ................ ....................................................................................... 30%

Presentations..................................................................................................................... 10%

Response Papers............................................................................................................... 10%

Bibliographic Database........................................................................................................

This course examines histories of Africa and travel through eyewitness accounts. Course participants will study journeys Africans have made within and from the continent alongside accounts of travelers visiting Africa from elsewhere. These travelers included migrant laborers, market women, Peace Corps volunteers, enslaved individuals, soldiers, political activists, adopted children, and religious evangelists since the 18th century.

The course readings and films focus on different groups of travelers in a number of time periods.

Some of the guiding questions we will consider:

How did people experience the movement of their bodies from one location to another?

How has ‘Africa’ taken on different meanings for our travelers?

What do their narratives indicate about changing conceptions of ethnicity, migration, tourism, citizenship, and the environment in different time periods?

And how did shifts in medical, transportation, and communication technologies shape their journeys?

This course introduces major themes in the history of medicine through the lens of disease. It focuses on two questions: How have people defined well-being? How have they responded to illness? The course considers major diseases to understand their multiple meanings across time and space including: Ebola, AIDS, malaria, plague, cholera, influenza, sleeping sickness, Chagas Disease, and PTSD. Themes to be considered include changing theories of disease causality, the development of international public health policy, social understandings of the body, and the growth of the pharmaceutical industry. The course emphasizes the roles governments, medical practitioners, and patients play in the social construction of disease and health. Case studies from India, Brazil, South Africa and the United States will be analyzed through readings, lectures and films.

Course Goals:

Primarily, this course aims to equip participants with tools for reading and researching about the past. Further, it provides a useful introduction to medical history across cultures for those considering a career in medicine or public health. It shows how people define illness according to particular social and cultural categories overtime. Through specific case studies, the course provides participants with an historical framework to interpret current debates in health policy and disease management.

Mary J. Dobson, Disease: The Extraordinary Stories Behind History’s Deadliest Killers

Charles Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866

Michel Cochrane, When AIDS Began: San Francisco and the Making of an Epidemic

Randall Packard, The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria

Additional Course Readings available online

Course participants will write two short papers (20%), take a midterm (15%) and a final (35%). Response papers, attendance and participation in class discussions contributes towards 30% of final grade. Late papers are not accepted. Plagarism and sloppy citations result in a failing grade.

How do societies understand illness, and how do they restore good health? In this course, we explore how communities have confronted disease throughout Africa’s history.  During the first six weeks, we read about the changing role of specialist healers since the 1700s, including shamans, malams, nurses, and drug peddlers. The second half of the course turns to the history of specific diseases including malaria, AIDS, sleeping sickness, and kwashiorkor through regional case studies. Particular emphasis is placed on pre-colonial healing, medical education, colonial therapeutics, and the impact of environmental change.

This course offers participants a nuanced, historical perspective on the current health crisis in Africa. Staggering figures place the burden of global disease in Africa; not only AIDS and malaria, but also pneumonia, diarrhea and mental illness significantly affect the lives of everyday people. Studying the history of illness and healing in African societies provides a framework with which to interpret the social, political, and environmental factors shaping international health today.

 Texts:

Timothy Burke

Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Duke, 1996)

Steven Feierman, John M. Janzen

The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa (California, 1992)

Nancy Rose Hunt

A colonial lexicon: Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo

(Duke, 1999)

 John Illiffe

The African AIDS Epidemic: A History

(Ohio, 2006)

 Maryinez Lyons,

The Colonial Disease: A Social History of Sleeping Sickness in Northern Zaire, 1900-1940

(Cambridge, 2002)

 Malidoma Patrice Some

Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman (Penguin Books, 1995)

Grading:

Course participants will make two oral and written reports on weekly assignments. There will also be one longer research paper (12-15 pages) on the history of a particular health concern.

Reading seminar-

The field of drug history allows us to learn about societies through their shifting relationships to pharmacological substances. In this seminar, we will focus on the multiple histories of major drugs including: Opium, Cocaine, Oral Contraceptives, Khat, Kola, and Viagra.

We will trace stories of each substance across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas using articles, historical texts, novels and films. Seminar participants will gain a comparative perspective on how societies regulate, discover, test, and market legal and illegal drugs over time, and how these multiple approaches overlap and inform one another. We will emphasize new research in history of medicine, anthropology, film studies, and public policy that suggests a theoretical framework for further investigations.

Texts:

The Opium Clerk

Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman

Leaf of Allah: Khat and Agricultural Transformation in Harerge Ethiopia 1875-1991

Kola is God's Gift

My Cocaine Museum

On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950-1970

Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease

Media/Films

Classic Narcotics Propaganda Films (1940s-70s)

TRAFFIK (the British miniseries)

Traffic (the film)

Maria Full of Grace

The Constant Gardener

Grading:

Contributions to Class Discussions .................................................................................... 40%

Short Research Paper ................ .......................................................................................30%

Presentations.....................................................................................................................10%

Response Papers...............................................................................................................10%

Bibliographic Database........................................................................................................10%

This course examines histories of Africa and travel through eyewitness accounts. Course participants will study journeys Africans have made within and from the continent alongside accounts of travelers visiting Africa from elsewhere. These travelers included migrant laborers, market women, Peace Corps volunteers, enslaved individuals, soldiers, political activists, adopted children, and religious evangelists since the 18th century.

 The course readings and films focus on different groups of travelers in a number of time periods.

 Some of the guiding questions we will consider:

• How did people experience the movement of their bodies from one location to another?

• How has ‘Africa’ taken on different meanings for our travelers?

• What do their narratives indicate about changing conceptions of ethnicity, migration, tourism, citizenship, and the environment in different time periods?

• And how did shifts in medical, transportation, and communication technologies shape their journeys?

Course Overview:

This course introduces major themes in the history of medicine through the lens of disease. It focuses on two questions: How have people defined well-being? How have they responded to illness? The course considers major diseases to understand their multiple meanings across time and space including: plague, cholera, influenza, sleeping sickness, PTSD, AIDS and malaria. Themes to be considered include changing theories of disease causality, the development of international public health policy, social understandings of the body, and the growth of the pharmaceutical industry.  The course emphasizes the roles governments, medical practitioners, and patients play in the social construction of disease and health. Case studies from India, Brazil, South Africa and the United States will be analyzed through readings, lectures and films.

Course Goals:

Primarily, this course aims to equip participants with tools for reading and researching about the past. Course participants will learn how to use news reports as sources of historical evidence.

Second, it provides a useful introduction to medical history across cultures for those considering a career in medicine or public health. It shows how people define illness according to particular social and cultural categories overtime. Through specific case studies, the course provides participants with an historical framework to interpret current debates in health policy and disease management.