Course Description
Summary
Public health policies, practices, and the communication thereof, have radically been altered since the COVID-19 pandemic. This cultural shift has been encouraged through social media, which many have argued have spread misinformation about public health and medicine. This course examines how anthropology can be a tool for understanding societal and cultural framing of public health and medicine both online and offline, and its impact on public health outcomes. The course specifically examines the role of social identity (i.e. race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality), social injustice, power, ideology in the societal and cultural framing of public health. The course also examines the role of embodiment in these processes, where routine patterns of human behavior, including health practices, influence thought and culture itself.
Special topics include: the COVID-19 pandemic, disability, cancer, reproductive health, childhood nutrition, among others. Key assignments will be built around examining how course concepts can be applied to YouTube, TikTok, and other social media. Though this course will give students skills and knowledge in this specific area of study, it will also give students analytic skills for allied fields that involve the study of anthropology, culture, society, history and communication.
