Medical Humanities: Bodies & Minds, Histories of the Normal and the Pathological

Full course description

Medical humanities acknowledge that instead of being fixed entities, health and illness are constantly changing, ambiguous phenomena. What is called healthy (sane) or ill (insane) depends indeed on a large variety of issues and dynamics: cultural, socio-economical, and religious aspects; moral system; legal system; science; technology; art and media, etc. This course approaches the question of health and illness through a philosophical, anthropological and sociological exploration of “bodies” and “minds”. Through a historical and cross-cultural perspective, it will discuss various concepts of body and mind. We will discuss how and why some bodies and minds are considered as normal and others as abnormal or pathological. For this, we will draw on scientific, social, cultural and economic contexts, but also on how bodies and minds are represented in art and (popular) culture. Cases include cosmetic surgery, the modern hospital, boxing in the ghetto, organ transplantation, prostheses, cognitive enhancement, medical imaging technologies, and the war on cancer.

Course objectives

To gain knowledge of different influential conceptions of ‘body’ and ‘mind’, ‘healthy’ and ‘sick’, ‘normal’ and ‘pathological’, ‘regular’ and ‘deviant’.
To gain understanding of how cultural, social, economic, legal, scientific and religious contexts play a role in the construction and consequences of these distinctions.

Prerequisites

NB: This course is highly interdisciplinary (philosophy, history, cultural studies, medical anthropology & sociology, several branches of medicine). It is situated at the crossroads of Social Sciences, Humanities and Science.

Prerequisite

Students should have taken at least one of the two following courses: COR1002 Philosophy of Science or HUM1003 Cultural Studies I: Doing Cultural Studies.

Medical Humanities: Bodies & Minds, Histories of the Normal and the Pathological