This course examines mental health, from the increasingly biological models espoused by psychiatric practitioners, to spiritual, social, and political understandings of psychic distress and healing. It investigates contemporary trends in mental health practice, exploring how diagnostic criteria are created and inhabited, experiments in pharmaceutical thinking, and alternative psychotherapeutic approaches across a variety of historical and social contexts. The class will explore how social worlds are shaped by mental health categories, and how identities, politics, economics, and philosophies contend, produce, and confront psychic distress.

Why do certain populations have longer life expectancies? Is it behavior, genes, structural inequalities? And why should the government care? This course unpacks taken-for-granted concepts like race, evidence-based medicine, and even the public health focus on equalizing life expectancies. From questions of racism in the clinic to citizenship and the Affordable Care Act, 'Race and Medicine' takes students on a journey of rethinking what constitutes social justice in health care.

This course explores fundamental issues in health policy in the global and domestic context. Through lectures, discussion, and case studies, we will examine interdisciplinary frameworks and methods for addressing challenges in public health. We will explore the complex interactions and tradeoffs in policy interventions to improve health; the role of various stakeholders in health care systems; and the social, economic, and political constraints affecting health policy. Students will gain foundational knowledge surrounding the global burden of disease and strategic skills to assess and influence health policy.

This course explores the history, culture, and language of the Deaf in the United States. The first part of the course focuses on the history of Deaf people in the United States. The second part discusses various aspects of Deaf culture: language, literature, art, politics, etc. The third part critically examines different issues facing Deaf people here in the United States and around the world. These issues include audism, linguicism, ableism, intersectionality, disability justice, bioethics, and education. No American Sign Language knowledge required.

Viruses are unique parasites of living cells and may be the most abundant, highest evolved life forms on the planet. The general strategies encoded by all known viral genomes are discussed using selected viruses as examples. A part of the course is dedicated to the molbio (tactics) inherent to these strategies. Another part introduces the biology of engagement of viruses with host defenses, what happens when virus infection leads to disease, vaccines and antiviral drugs, and the evolution of infectious agents and emergence of new viruses. These topics are intertwined with discussions of modern technologies that benefit the field of virology.

Within a broad context of historical, social, and ethical concerns, a survey of normal childhood development and selected disorders from the perspectives of the physician, the biologist, and the bioethicist. There is an emphasis on the complex relationship between genetic and acquired causes of disease, the environment, medical practice, social conditions, and cultural values. The course features visits from children with some of the conditions discussed, site visits, and readings from the original medical, scientific, and bioethical literature.