Life and Health on the Margins

Catalog description

Socioeconomic inequality and marginalization have defined population health on local, national, and global scales for centuries. This undergraduate research seminar investigates the relationships between neighborhood environments (physical and social) and community health in Philadelphia. The course focuses on Black and immigrant neighborhoods between 1820 and 1920. We incorporate medical and public health literature from that time period along with census data, newspaper and periodical accounts of the neighborhoods, insurance and other maps, and a wide range of archival documents to assemble multidimensional profiles of the neighborhoods at various points in time, relating their physical and social characteristics to their health outcomes. This class is part of the Penn-HSP Partnership. We use resources from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania as well as other specialized libraries and collections, and HSP staff are available to assist students with their research projects.