Fall 2023 Course Offerings

This class will investigate the forms and cultural functions of science fiction using films, books, and computer-based fictional spaces (Internet, video games, etc).

ENGL 163: Introduction to Health Humanities
Dr. Kym Weed | TuTh TBD

While human health is often understood as the purview of biomedicine, humanities methods can illuminate the social meaning of health, illness, disability, and mortality. The interdisciplinary field of health humanities calls upon methods and ways of knowing from a range of academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to explore human health, illness, and disability.

In this introduction to Health Humanities, we will apply the critical reading and analytical practices of the humanities to a range of texts—novels, memoirs, articles, poems, films—that explore material, cultural, and political aspects of human health. Topics will include narrative medicine, medical training, illness narratives, disability studies, chronic illness, graphic medicine, patient advocacy, mortality, and healthcare systems.

ENGL 266: Science and Literature
Joe Fletcher | TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM

Introductory exploration of the relation between science and literature, as well as the place and value of both in the contemporary world.

ENGL 268: Medicine, Literature, and Culture
Dr. Jane Thrailkill | MoWe 4:40PM – 5:30PM

An introduction to key topics that focus on questions of representation at the intersections of medicine, literature, and culture.

ENGL 303: Scientific and Technical Communication
Dr. Ruby Pappoe | TuTh 2:00-3:15pm

Advanced course focused on adapting scientific and technical content to public or non-expert audiences in oral, written, and digital forms. Assignments may include composing professional reports, developing multimedia instructions for a product, or developing an interactive exhibit.

ENGL 370: Race, Health, and Narrative
Dr. Cynthia Current | MoWeFr 2:30PM – 3:20PM
This interdisciplinary course explores how issues of health, medicine, and illness are impacted by questions of race in 20th-century American literature and popular culture. Specific areas covered include pain, death, the family and society, reproduction, mental illness, aging, human subject experimentation, the doctor-patient relationship, pesticides, and bioethics.

ENGL 610: Practicum in Health Humanities
Dr. Kym Weed | Tu 11:00am-2:00pm

This course introduces graduate students and advanced undergraduate students to topics, methods, and concepts in health humanities through practical learning experiences. Along with readings and classroom discussion, this hands-on course will include activities such as writing workshops, bi-weekly lab meetings in HHIVE Lab, Health Humanities Grand Rounds, visits to UNC libraries, and outside lectures and art experiences at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke Universities. By following their interests and exploring UNC-CH’s extraordinary resources, students will develop a particular area of inquiry and pursue opportunities for further learning through research, engagement, collaboration, and service.

ENGL 864: Studies in Latina/o Literature, Culture, and Criticism
Dr. Irizarry | W 3:00-6:00pm

This course explores how post-1992 Latinx narrative–in fiction, film, and visual arts–portray “misbehaving” human, other than human, and topographical bodies (air, land, water). We will explore how bodies that do not conform to desired “norms” are represented, perceived, and treated. Special emphasis will be placed on social, political, and medical contexts where bodies frequently “misbehave.” Bodies to be studied include but are not limited to dissident, queer, transgender, migrant, dis/abled, ill, and/or dead. Authors, cultural producers, and filmmakers will have ethnonational origins from the Caribbean and Central American diasporas. Materials include novels, visual art, performance art, and film.

This course explores birth and death as essential human rites of passage impacted by changing American historical and cultural contexts. Since both remain defining life events beyond experiential recall, studying them in interdisciplinary ways opens powerful insights into how culture mediates the construction of bodies and social identities. Readings and assignments are designed to explore changing anthropological rituals, medical procedures, scientific technologies, and ethical quandaries. Students will choose the topics for research projects and learn how to access useful resources. We will collective explore a variety of representations of birth and death in literary expression, film, and material culture as well as investigate questions about when life begins and ends, different ways of disposing bodies and remembering individuals, and how a confrontation with the impermanence of life leads to the creation of meaning, especially for students being figuratively born again as learners at UNC.

This course introduces students to questions of medicine in the Arab world, from medieval times to the present with an emphasis on the contemporary period. It takes medicine as a lens for understanding the formation of the Arab world, connecting medical practices and institutions with wider formations like colonialism, nationalism, violence, or religion.

Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is central to one of the most profound revolutions in the history of thought, generating stunning insights but also some misunderstanding and tragic abuse. This seminar aims to provide a clear understanding of how natural selection works, and how it doesn’t. We will examine objections to the theory; how the environmental and health problems we face today reflect processes of natural selection; and recent attempts to understand why we get sick, how we respond to disease, why we get old, why we choose mates the way we do, and more. Class sessions will feature a mix of lecture and discussion of concepts and issues. Students will also engage in small group projects¿cooperative explorations of problems raised in class or in the readings and/or designing mini research projects.

ANTH 147: Comparative Healing Systems
Dr. Michele Rivkin-Fish | TuTh 12:30PM – 1:45PM

In this course we compare a variety of healing beliefs and practices so that students may gain a better understanding of their own society, culture, and medical system.

ANTH 270: Living Medicine
Dr. Martha King | MoWeFr 1:25PM – 2:15PM

This course examines the social and cultural experience of medicine, the interpersonal and personal aspects of healing and being healed. It explores how medicine shapes and is shaped by those who inhabit this vital arena of human interaction: physicians, nurses, other professionals and administrators; patients; families; friends and advocates.

ANTH  278 (WGST 278): Women in Science
Dr. Nicole Else-Quest | TuTh 3:30PM – 4:45PM

The role of women in scientific domains throughout history and a consideration of the status of women and men as scientists. The development of science as a cultural practice.

ANTH 390 Anthropology of Fitness
Emily Curtin

ANTH 442: Health and Gender after Socialism
Dr. Michele Rivkin-Fish | TuTh 5:00PM – 6:15PM

This course examines postsocialist experiences of the relationship between political, economic, social, and cultural transitions, and challenges in public health and gender relations.

ANTH 448: Health and Medicine in the American South
Dr. Martha King | MoWeFr 11:15AM – 12:05PM

This course examines ways we can understand the history and culture of a region through the experience of health and healthcare among its people. With an anthropological approach, this course considers the individual, social, and political dimensions of medicalized bodies in the American South from the 18th century through the current day.

ANTH 474: The Anthropology of Disability
TBA | MoWeFr 9:05AM – 9:55AM

Investigates the social, cultural, and historical variation in the conception of disability, in its practical meaning and performance, and in its social and medical management. Special attention is paid to the interplay of embodiment, identity, and agency in work and everyday life and in political action and advocacy.

ECON 450: Health Economics: Problems and Policy
Dr. Andres Hincapie | TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM

Economic analysis applied to problems and public policy in health care.

ENVR 525: Water, Sanitation, Hygiene, and Global Health
Dr. Michael Fisher | TuTh 3:30PM – 4:45PM

Builds on an understanding of infectious and toxic hazards, disease causation, and environmental transmission. Deals with hazard and disease classification; safety, risk, and vulnerability; interventions and their health impact; approaches in different settings; distal factors (e.g., water scarcity, climate change); and approaches to studying unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene.

ENVR 705: One Health (PUBH 705): Philosophy to Practical Integration
Dr. Jill Stewart and Mamie Harris | Th 8:00AM – 9:15AM

This course explores the intersection of human, animal, and environmental health and facilitates the understanding of health as an inexorably linked system requiring multidisciplinary collaborative efforts. The One Health concept demonstrates the importance of a holistic approach to disease prevention and the maintenance of human, animal, and environmental health.

ENVR 795 (HBEH 785):Critical issues in work, worker and workplace health
Dr. Laura Linnan and Maija Leff | Tu 12:30PM – 3:30PM
This course prepares students to contribute as members of an interdisciplinary team to protect and promote workers’ health. Students will learn that work is a social determinant of health and explore the context in which worker health protection/promotion practitioners work. Students will be able to summarize key regulations and policies that impact work and worker health.

This course examines the intersection of political, economic, social, and environmental systems that shape health and disease across spatial and temporal scales. A political ecological framework is used to examine such topics as how political forces and economic interests helped shape the HIV/AIDS and malaria pandemics in Africa and beyond.

GEOG 222: Health and Medical Geography
Dr. Michael Emch | TuTh 3:30PM – 4:45PM

Health and disease are studied by analyzing the cultural/environmental interactions that lie behind world patterns of disease distribution, diffusion, and treatment, and the ways these are being altered by development.

HBEH 700: Foundations of Health Equity, Social Justice and Human Rights
Dr. Derrick Matthews | Tu 3:35PM – 6:20PM

This is a required course for masters’ students in the EQUITY concentration. The course will expose students to the broad context through which public health practitioners and researchers understand and address public health issues in regards to health equity, social justice and human rights. This course will provide students with an overview of the field, as well as an introduction to concepts and topics that are relevant across the MPH curriculum.

HPM 758: Underserved Populations and Health Reform
Dr. Ciara Zachary | Tu 5:00PM – 8:00PM

This course gives students a greater understanding of programs available to serve underserved populations, and how the ACA (or any replacement) will impact on care provided to underserved populations. The course is designed to help students think critically about the impact of policy changes on different populations.

Forbes magazine projects a crest of increasing employment in healthcare over the next decade. This means the strategic communication skill set is in high demand by hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, healthcare advertising or PR agencies, insurance companies, non-profit organizations, and more. In this course, students will learn about the healthcare sector, explore the patient journey, map stakeholders and influencers, and get hands-on experience with marketing and communications that can help people lead healthier lives.

MEJO 562: Environmental and Science Documentary Television
Dr. Tom Linden | Th 3:30PM – 6:15PM

Students work in teams to conceive, produce, and script mini-documenties on environmental and science topics for broadcast on North Carolina Public Television.

What is distinctive about the kind of knowledge called “science”? What is scientific explanation? How are scientific theories related to empirical evidence?

PHIL 165: Bioethics
Dr. Maria Giulia Napolitano | MoWeFr 12:20PM – 1:10PM

An examination of ethical issues in the life sciences and technologies, medicine, public health, and/or human interaction with nonhuman animals or the living environment.

PHIL 211: Perspectives on Gender, Race, and Marginality in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Science, and Medicine
Dr. Mariska Leunissen | Th 9:30AM – 12:00PM

This course studies through the examination of several infamous, ignored, or otherwise uncharted Ancient Greek texts the views about gender and race as presented in ancient Greek philosophy, medicine, and science. Our aims are to generate a new understanding of how the male elite used such views to further promote or justify (or perhaps challenge) the existing marginalization and silencing of women, foreigners, and less privileged men.

PSYC 504: Health Psychology
Dr. Karen Gil | TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM, TuTh 12:30PM – 1:45PM

An in-depth coverage of psychological, biological, and social factors that may be involved with health.

This course is intended for students who know no Spanish or so little they feel the need to start over. Students with more than two semesters of college Spanish are not eligible. The course covers the curriculum of first-semester Spanish taught within a health context, with a focus on speaking.

PUBH 711: Critical Issues in Global Health
Dr. Marie Lina Excellent and Dr. Karar Ahsan | TuTh 5:00PM – 6:30PM

Explores contemporary issues/controversies in global health through an interdisciplinary perspective; examines complexity of social, economic, political, and environmental factors affecting global health; analyzes global health disparities through a social justice lens; and exposes students to opportunities in global health work and research.

PUBH 712: Global Health Ethics
Dr. Adam Gilbertson | Remote, Asynch 

This course will introduce students to the theoretical and practical aspects of public health ethics. Develop student’s analytical skills to evaluate ethical issues related to public health policy, prevention, treatment, and research. Topics include: ethical reasoning; concepts of justice; principles of interacting with communities; professional conduct and research. Online course.

Global health policy impacts the health and well being of individuals and peoples throughout the world.  Many determinants of health operate at a global level, and many national policies, social practices, and individual health behaviors are structured by global forces.  Concern for the spread of infectious diseases, increasing rates of chronic diseases and the effectiveness of health systems to provide quality care are among the daunting challenges to health policy makers. 

With profound social, political and economic changes rapidly challenging global health, the aim of this course in Global Health Policy is to provide students with a variety of opportunities to understand the epidemiologic trends in world health, the institutions of global health governance, and the effects of globalization on global and national health policy.

This course provides an introduction to the relationship between international relations, global health policy and public health outcomes.  The focus of this course will be on public policy approaches to global health, employing interdisciplinary methodologies to understand selected public health policies, programs, and interventions.  Providing a foundation for responding to global health harms, this course will teach students how to apply policy analysis to a wide range of critical issues in global health determinants, interventions, and impacts.

PLCY 361: Health Policy in the United States
Dr. Carmen Gutierrez | TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM

An analysis of the evolution of American health policy with special emphasis on current health care finance and delivery challenges.

PLCY 565: Global Health Policy
Dr. Benjamin Meier | TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM
Coursework will focus on public policy approaches to global health, employing interdisciplinary methodologies to understand selected public health policies, programs, and interventions. For students who have a basic understanding of public health.

This course aims to provide an introduction to the study of population health in the United States. Key goals include understanding the measurement and theoretical frameworks underlying the study of population health, understanding trends and disparities in U.S. population health, and understanding policy options to improve population health.

SOCI 180: Introduction to Global Population Health
Dr. Elizabeth Frankenberg | TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM

This course provides students with an introduction to population health, with an emphasis on three perspectives: demographic methods for assembling data and evidence, the social determinants of health framework, and the role of global institutions and movements in population health.

SOCI 422: Sociology of Mental Health and Illness
Katrina Branecky | MoWeFr 3:35PM – 4:25PM
Examines the uniqueness of the sociological perspective in understanding mental health and illness. Draws upon various theoretical perspectives to best understand patterns, trends, and definitions of mental health and illness in social context. Focuses on how social factors influence definitions, perceptions, patterns, and trends of mental health and illness.

SOCI 469: Health and Society
Dr. Y. Claire Yang, Dr. Taylor Hargrove, Grace Franklyn, Denise Mitchell | TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM, etc. 

The primary objective of the course is to explain how and why particular social arrangements affect the types and distribution of diseases, as well as the types of health promotion and disease prevention practices that societies promote.

SPAN 321: Spanish for the Medical Professions (First Semester)
Dr. Helene De Fays, TBA | MoWeFr 9:05AM – 9:55AM, MoWeFr 10:10AM – 11:00AM, MoWeFr 1:25PM – 2:15PM

All-skills course with review of grammar, extensive writing and speaking practice. Vocabulary, readings, and activities geared toward the language of health care professions in the context of the United States Hispanic community. Students may receive credit for only one of SPAN 320, 321, or 323. Open only to students in the minor in Spanish for the professions.

SPAN 328 – Spanish for the Medical Professions (Second Semester)
Elizabeth Bruno, Victoria Martin | MoWeFr 9:05AM – 9:55AM, MoWeFr 10:10AM – 11:00AM, MoWeFr 12:20PM – 1:10PM

Second semester, all-skills course with extensive writing and speaking practice, including grammar review. Vocabulary, readings, and activities geared toward the language of health care professions in the context of the United States Hispanic community.

SPAN 373: Studies in Latin American Literature
Dr. Rosa Perelmuter | TuTh 3:30PM – 4:45PM, MoWeFr 12:20PM – 1:10PM

Prerequisites, SPAN 301 or 302. The literature of Spanish America from pre-Colombian times to the present. Representative authors and texts from various literary movements will be studied in their sociohistorical contexts.

The role of women in scientific domains throughout history and a consideration of the status of women and men as scientists. The development of science as a cultural practice.

WGST 290: Women’s Health Activism in Twentieth Century America
Dr. Jillian Hinderliter | TuTh 8:00AM – 9:15AM