Medicine and Healing in China

Catalog description

This course explores medicine and healing culture in Chinese history, including the introduction of Western/biomedicine to China since the 17th century. We start from the early 20th century, when we witnessed the major confrontation between Chinese medical traditions and the modernizing Chinese state. We go back in time two thousand years ago and move chronologically to highlight plurality and changes. In the second half of the semester we come back to the 20th–21st centuries and investigate the practice and policies of public health in China and Chinese East Asia, including the recent history of SARS and COVID-19 in Taiwan. This is an upper-level class with substantial reading and written assignment each week. The first half of each class will be discussions of the assigned readings. No prior knowledge of China or Chinese history is required.