Race, War, and Medicine

Catalog description

This course explores the historical and contemporary relationship between three prominent pillars of our daily lives: race, war, and medicine. How did each influence the development of the other, and through this process construct modern societies? We will examine the role played by medical practitioners and military personnel in the creation of social and racial hierarchies that in turn abetted the appropriation of land and the extraction of labor. We will begin in the seventeenth century and predominantly track the history of modern Western imperialist powers, especially the US. Nonetheless, an important priority of the course is to de-center imperial and top-down narratives, and the scholarship we engage with reflects that goal.