Taught Courses (Selected)
Non-Western and Indigenous Medicine in Perspective
This course takes an interdisciplinary look at the histories of practices and systems of medicine and healing that are variously deemed ‘indigenous’, ‘traditional’, ‘non-western’, ‘alternative’ and ‘complementary’. Despite the ascendancy of biomedicine across the world by the twenty-first century, recent demographic research also suggests the increasing use of ‘unconventional’ medical practices both in North America and in other parts of the developed world, driving research that increasingly acknowledges postmodern medical diversity. This course will provide a sense of the historical, social, cultural and ideological trends that drove the evolution of these systems of medicine into the forms in which they are practised today. We will examine research from a broad variety of disciplines including history, ethno-pharmacology, anthropology and sociology. I hope to inculcate a sense of how both ‘western’ medicine and indigenous practices and systems of medicine are perceived by healthcare seekers and explaining the practice of choosing a masala of medicine. Case studies we will explore include Chinese medicine, magic and medicine in ancient Egypt, Ayurveda, cinchona and empire, variolation as the predecessor to vaccination, indigenous healing among the Aboriginal, Maori and First Nations as well as yoga and acupuncture.
Science and Empire
In a recent YouGov poll, more than half of British citizens reported that they believed that the empire had been a force for good and an aspect of history of which all British citizens could be proud. Such perceptions are not unusual; and one of the most common justifications for imperialism—both historical and contemporaneous—draw on the idea that the colonization and control of one space/peoples by another is ultimately for the benefit of the colonized. The colonizers often justify their actions by arguing that they brought science, technology and medicine to a barbarian, uncivilized society in addition to implementing law and order. Such ideas are inherently problematic; yet continue to be long-lived.
‘Western’ science and medicine were germane to the project and success of Empire; while Empire itself provided materials, impetus, ideas and spaces for the unfolding of science and the work of scientists. Indeed, the ascendancy of European empires coincided with, resulted from and impelled a series of significant developments in both the natural and human sciences. Briefly consider, for instance, the discovery of quinine through contact with the Cinchona Indians; Captain Cook’s charting the seas and lands of the Pacific; Ronald Ross’ and Robert Koch’s work on infectious disease transmission; Charles Darwin’s voyages on the Beagle across the world providing the data for his work on evolutionary theory. Modern ‘western’ science, medicine and technology is therefore deeply embedded within the histories of exploration, slavery and imperial expansion across the world.
In this course, students are introduced to this complex history and are urged to consider the roles played by science and scientists in the history of imperial expansion: and are particularly encouraged to consider how the embedding of science within colonialism has had profound consequences for the trajectories of science, medicine and technology in postcolonial spaces. We will explore as extensively as possible the relationships between science, place, and community in European colonialism. While the course examines certain specific disciplines, we will focus most closely on the meaning of science and medicine for both Europeans and indigenous populations in the colonies. How did empire ensure that science was refracted into the artificial categories and hierarchies of ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ science? How did empire aid, facilitate and demand scientific inquiry and innovation?
Introduction to Disability Studies
Like disease and death, disability is a corporeal experience that is inevitable, universal and ubiquitous. Yet, the academic focus on disability often remains restricted to the lens of the biomedical. Born in the wake of the disability rights movement, disability studies has matured and become established, although it remains largely unknown compared to work on race, gender and class. This course explores disability from an interdisciplinary perspective: literature, first-person accounts, public policy, advocacy and law. We begin the course with consideration of related topics: what is Disability? Why do definitions matter? This course anchors disability firmly in the frame of analysis, allowing us to engage with some of the most profound questions in the social sciences and the humanities.
What does it mean to be human?
How do and how have we, as human beings, experienced and responded to corporeal difference and debility in our midst?
How is disability socially constructed?
How does disability intersect with race, class, gender, sexuality and national origin?
History of Public Health
Taking a historical perspective to public health, this course aims to explore and analyse the social, economic, political and scientific events and processes that have shaped modern public health. This course will provide a general introduction to some key concepts in public health and will touch on sanitation and hygiene in antiquity and in the middle ages, leading to discussions of pre-nineteenth century efforts at disease control including isolation and quarantine, particularly against the onslaught of the Black Death. We explore the global histories of smallpox inoculation and vaccination, and explore the relationships between inoculation and vaccination. We examine the histories of race and public health, focusing on the plantation as a site of experimentation and exploitation. This course goes on to describe how the increasing mobility of Europeans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as travellers, colonisers and migrants and the consequences of this mobility. We track the flow of diseases like cholera; which found fertile breeding grounds in the rapidly urbanising and industrialising populations of Western Europe—providing new and unforeseen public health challenges across the world. Major pandemics of the nineteenth century are explored as case studies of public health. The course also describes the major public health failures and successes of the twentieth and 21st centuries—ranging from smallpox vaccination to SARs.