Bodies and Borders: Health, Place, and Displacement

Catalog description

How are health and wellbeing shaped by place? This course examines the relationship between place, environment, and health, with particular attention to mobility and migration and to the impact of changing climates. Scholars have used the term Anthropocene to characterize this era of fossil-fuel driven climatic changes. This course will ask how new understandings of the relationship between human well-being, particularly health and disease, and place and environment are shaping one other. Drawing from anthropology, history, and related fields, we will ask how humans have thought about health and place over time, about the relationship between health and cities in particular, and about mobility, movement, and displacement and their relationship to health. Students will be asked to conduct independent research and to produce a final project or paper on a case study of their choosing. Please note that the reading load in this course will be intensive.