Spring 2026 Course Offerings

ENGL 071H: FYS – Healers & Patients

Jane Thrailkill
MoWe 8:30-9:45am

When medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman writes that “illness has meaning,” he reminds us that the human experience of being sick involves more than bodily symptoms. Moreover, the effects of illness and disability are rarely confined to one person. In this course, we will analyze a diverse collection of writers who work to make sense of illness and disability through a range of genres including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, film, comics, on-line lectures, and scholarship. We will explore the ways that people experience, make meaning from, and represent illness, caregiving, and disability.

ENGL 161: Literature of War

Hilary Lithgow
TuTh 3:30-4:45pm

This is a class about literature and war and what each might teach us about the other. We will consider a range of texts and center our work around this question: what, if anything, can a work of art help us see or understand about war that might not be shown by other means?

ENGL 163: Introduction to Health Humanities

Hill Taylor
TuTh 2:00-3:15pm

This course will introduce students to the key critical concepts, debates, and questions of practice in the interdisciplinary field of health humanities. Students will draw on humanities methods to analyze topics related to human health, illness, and disability. Topics to be considered may include narrative medicine, disability studies, chronic illness, graphic medicine, health activism, mortality, and healthcare systems.

ENGL 266: Science & Literature

Denise Xu
TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm

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

ENGL 268H: Medicine, Literature, and Culture

Matthew Taylor
TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm

“How is solving a crime like diagnosing an illness? Why do descriptions of diseases follow narrative patterns? What’s behind the rhetoric of “battling” disease, and why are social problems often characterized as “ills,” “plagues,” and “cancers”? How have notions of “health” and “normality” resulted in such things as forced sterilization and genocide? What are the cultural meanings associated with “life” and “death”? What do the stories we create—about disability and disease, about who (and what) has the power to heal, about the fear of death and desire for transcendence—tell us about our culture, our history, and the experience of being human? This course will provide an introduction to Health Humanities, a new area of study that combines methods and topics from literary studies, medicine, cultural studies, and anthropology. We’ll read novels, screen films and television episodes, learn about illnesses and treatments, and explore multidisciplinary perspectives as we investigate the close affinities among literary representation, medical science, and clinical practice. We’ll also play close attention to how ideas about sickness have changed over time and across cultures. Topics will include the doctor-patient relationship, medical detection, the rise of psychiatry, illness and social exclusion, pandemics and the “outbreak narrative,” government eugenics programs, the quest for immortality, and end-of-life care.”

ENGL 269: Introduction to Disability Studies

Kym Weed
TuTh 12:30pm-1:45pm

Disability Studies is an interdisciplinary field that, according to Simi Linton, “aims to expose the ways that disability has been made exceptional and to work to naturalize disabled people.” Almost every human will experience a significant illness or disability in their lifetime; therefore, investigating the lived experience, representations, and cultural understandings of disability give us insight into the ever-changing relationship between our bodies, selves, and worlds. This course will introduce students to key critical concepts and debates in the field of Disability Studies by drawing on multiple disciplinary perspectives. Through readings (critical essays, fiction, memoir, poetry, and film), in-class presentations, and discussion, students in this course will be introduced to the biomedical, social, and justice models of disability; explore the histories of disability communities and activists; examine representations of disability; and study how multiple forms of inequality and oppression intersect with disability and disability justice work.

ENGL 695: Research Seminar in Health Humanities & Disability Studies – Knowledge of the Body & Embodied Knowledge

Kym Weed
TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm

*Note: Undergraduate student pre-requisite: ENGL 268/268H, ENGL 269, or instructor permission

This course focuses on research methods in the Health Humanities and Disability Studies that can be used to develop interdisciplinary, team projects. We will explore topics related to the body and embodiment through a range of materials (including fiction, memoirs, poetry, films, articles, and expressive arts) and fields of inquiry (literary studies, disability studies, critical geography, health sciences, philosophy & ethics, anthropology, creative writing, and art & design). In this project-centered course, we will practice multiple analytical and research methods that can be used to contribute to understandings of bodies, embodiment, disability, and health(care).

In addition to weekly in-person seminars, students in this section of ENGL 695 will engage with students from the University of Exeter, UK and the University of South Florida, Tampa in a shared virtual campus. Across ten sessions led by a team of cross-disciplinary scholars from the US, UK, and Canada, we will navigate disciplinary and cultural differences in our critical interrogation of the following intellectual questions: How do we come to know about and through our bodies? What does it mean to be a well/sick body? How do social and interpersonal and affective networks inform health, disability, and our embodied sense of self? What are the complex relationships between spatial configurations, social environments, and experiences of disability and (mental) estrangement? What are the different cultural expressions and disciplinary epistemologies that comprise health/illness/disability?

Other ECL Courses of Interest

ENGL 57H: Future Perfect: Science Fictions and Social Form

Matthew Taylor
TuTh 2:00pm – 3:15pm

What will our world look like in ten years? Fifty? One hundred? Will the future be a utopian paradise or a dystopian wasteland? Through a wide-ranging survey of popular science writing, novels, and films, this first year seminar will examine fictional and nonfictional attempts to imagine the future from the nineteenth century to the present. We will explore everything from futurology and transhumanism to warnings of imminent environmental collapse. Our focus will be less on assessing the accuracy of these predictions and more on determining what they tell us about the hopes and fears of the times in which they were made. The course will culminate in a short research paper on a future-oriented topic of your choosing.

ENGL 089H, Section 001: The Machine Mistake from Frankenstein to the Smartphone

David Ross
MWF 12:20-1:10pm

Science fiction supposedly pines for gleaming gadgetry. Even at its giddiest and wonkiest, however, science fiction remembers Frankenstein. It remembers that monsters develop ideas of their own; that they wind up haunting and even hunting us; that our innovations—however seemingly benign—threaten to escape our control and comprehension and embark on whole new careers of unintended consequence. Our course traces the genealogy of this machine anxiety. Our guiding questions will be: What are machines? Are machines “natural” or “unnatural”? Are their dangers inherent? How do they change us? Is an artificially intelligent “machine” really a machine?

ENGL 146H: Science Fiction/Fantasy/Utopia

Cindy Current
TuTh 2:00-3:15pm

Space adventure, aliens, funky forms of identity, and apocalyptic worlds are familiar territories for science and fantasy fiction; but the novels we read this semester will ask us to reconsider and redefine all of these concepts. We’ll start first with the name of the genre itself: science fiction. Under Course Reserves you’ll find works, such as Adam Roberts book on science fiction, that those of you particularly interested in the genre of science fiction might like to read.
But let’s start here. We’re going to use the term speculative fiction because it covers science fiction, fantasy, and even many forms of standard literature. Speculative fiction, in this course, includes novels that present alternative conceptions of the worlds we know through critiques of science, society, and identity. Speculative fiction asks us not only to think about where our worlds are heading technologically, environmentally, and politically, but also interrogates where we are now and where we have come from.

The goals for this course include more than basic reading and discussion. In other words, this class not a book club, and we’re not here to write book reports. Quizzes, group work, speaking your thoughts in class, and formal writing assignments are structured upon the skills of analysis and critique. More than ever, in a data-driven and image-dominated world, the ability to read, write, and critically analyze are vitally important (and let’s also add the ability to focus). Certainly, the featured authors believe in this deeply, and so, for those of you interested in fully participating in your careers and in your culture, this course is important. Not only will we have fun reading challenging books, but we will also come away with a different eye on the world and an understanding of why that lens matters.

ENGL 487/FOLK 487: Personal Narrative & Legend

Jesse Fivecoate
MoWeFr 1:25-2:15pm

Oral storytelling may seem old-fashioned, but we tell true (or possibly true) stories every day. We will study personal narratives (about our own experiences) and legends (about improbable, intriguing events), exploring the techniques and structures that make them effective communication tools and the influence of different contexts and audiences.

ENGL 685 Literature of the Americas: Latinx Diasporic Econarratives

Ylce Irizarry
Mo 3:35-6:35pm

*Note: This course is part of the LSP minor, and LSP students may not be able to count this course toward another major/minor.

In the late 20th century, environmentalism began to trace the erasure of the planet via natural disaster and ecocatastrophe. This mixed, advanced undergraduate and graduate course examines how the 21st century Latinx econarrative imaginary traces these erasures. By reading textual and visual objects produced in the last decade, students in this course will study how a distinct form of narrative—what I call Latinx Diasporic Econarrative—maps the erasure of aquatic, atmospheric, terran, and extra-terrestrial environments. We will explore how natural environments are represented, perceived, and treated, focusing on the political, economic, and cultural mechanisms thRough which these bodies are erased. Readings include primary (fiction and poetry) and secondary (journal articles and book chapters) texts. Visual texts include experimental films and music video.

Certain literary genres will be emphasized: Climate Fiction, Ecogothic, Ecohorror, Hybrid Texts, Science Fiction. Certain modes of critical scholarship will be applied: Afro Latinx Studies, Ecocriticism, Feminism, Narrative Theory, Queer Ecologies, New Materialism, Ocean Studies. Assigned texts represent perspectives of cultural producers from the Latinx Diaspora, including producers from, or writing about, these countries: Argentina, Chile, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the United States, and Uruguay. All instruction will be in English; students are welcome to read English language materials translated into Spanish or the original Spanish versions of materials. Written assignments may be submitted in English or Spanish; oral presentations must be delivered in English. Graduate students can opt to complete this course with graduate seminar credit by writing the length of paper required for seminar credit (25 pp) in addition to completing the other course assignments.

ENGL 687: Queer LatinX Environmentalisms

Maria De Guzman
MWF 10:10-11:00am

*Note: This course is part of the LSP minor, and LSP students may not be able to count this course toward another major/minor.

This mixed level undergraduate and graduate student course examines queer LatinX literature from the 1970s to the present as it intersects with ecological and environmental concerns. We pay close attention to LatinX cultural productions that approach ecology and environmental justice from queer perspectives and that queer ecological concerns from minoritized perspectives.

This mixed level graduate and advanced undergraduate course examines queer LatinX literature from the late 1980s to the present as it intersects with ecological and environmentalist concerns. LatinX literature is multi-ethno-racial and, even when emerging from the United Sates, is multi-national and transnational. We explore how these cultural productions question normative assumptions about the “order of things,” the “naturalness” of nature, and the “inevitability” of the historical exploitations of coloniality and the ongoing predations of neocolonialism. We pay close attention to LatinX cultural productions that approach cosmology, ecology, and environmental justice from queer perspectives and that queer ecological concerns from minoritized perspectives. “Queer” and “LatinX,” combined with one another and modifying “Environmentalisms,” signal other ways of thinking, doing, being, and becoming. These other ways entail exploring concepts of “nature” entangled with and dis-entangled from the coercive essentialisms of “natural law” and the violent settler-colonialism informing patriarchal capitalist “normalcy”; thinking beyond the blinders of heteronormative and species-hierarchical traditional humanism; perceiving and valuing multiple forms of kinship between humans and between humans and other life forms; ceasing to measure worth by a compulsory procreational model; conceiving sustainable interdependencies and thriving assemblages; and cultivating the diversity of diversity as part of salvaging what remains of biodiversity in this time of human-induced global and planetary crisis. With every text, film, and other cultural production, we will be exploring its aesthetic dimensions (hence FC-AESTH) in relation to its socio-political dimensions (FC-POWER & SOCIETY). The course counts for IDEAS IN ACTION. There will be plenty of opportunities for working together as well as presenting your work orally.

Coming soon!

AMST 220: Animal: Contemporary Animal Studies

Sharon Holland
TuTh 12:30-1:45PM

This course is an introduction to “animal studies,” through animal rights, animal welfare, food studies, and the human/animal distinction in philosophical inquiry. We will read work from dog and horse trainers, and explore the history of the American racetrack. This course builds a moral and ethical reasoning skill set.

AMST 701: Interdisciplinary Research Methods

Soham Patel
We 2:30PM – 5:30PM

This course will focus on techniques of American studies investigation. Various faculty members will make presentations highlighting approaches including Southern studies, American Indian studies, Material Culture studies, and new media.

ANTH 147: Comparative Healing Systems

Jocelyn Chua
MWF 10:10am – 11:00am
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

Martha King
TuTh 9:30AM – 10:45AM
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 285: Climate Change and Health

Emily Curtin
MWF 11:15AM – 12:05PM
Climate change is an existentially urgent problem with profound implications for human health. This course will examine the political, economic, and sociocultural origins of climate change and the human costs of rising temperatures, oil spills, floods, pesticide use, pollution, and other ecological disasters.

ANTH 319: Global Health

Mark Sorensen
MWF 10:10AM – 11:00AM
This class explores some of the historical, biological, economic, medical, and social issues surrounding globalization and health consequences.

ANTH 389.001: Special Topics in Medical Anthropology

Melissa Salm
MWF 2:30PM – 3:20PM
This course introduces students to qualitative data analysis methods used in medical anthropology. Students will learn to interpret patterns, identify themes, and develop codes to inductively analyze textual and other qualitative materials. Emphasis is placed on the epistemological and ethical dimensions of coding: how analytic categories are constructed from the ground up, what they reveal and obscure, and how coding practices can both support ethnographic interpretation and make anthropological insights legible across disciplinary domains. The course also highlights the reflexive dimensions of coding, treating it as a site of methodological self-awareness where the iterative and contingent nature of interpretation becomes visible.

ANTH 389.002: Empire & Medicine

Townsend Middleton
MWF 11:15AM – 12:05PM

This course explores the links between medicine and empire broadly conceived. Over the semester, we will scrutinize the history of medicine (colonial and otherwise), while also considering if and how contemporary medical regimes like the World Health Organization, Big Pharma, and Global Health may be considered empires in their own right. The course will introduce students to different theories of power to understand the political and moral economies of medicine—past and present. The syllabus will take us from the annals of tropical medicine to the cutting-edge insights of post-human anthropology. Through case studies of different diseases, drugs, and imperial regimes, we’ll ask: How have medicine and empire made the body a site of control and possibility? How has health become a distinct territory of power? And, given the colonial underpinnings and technological developments of our present-world, what may be said of the changing faces and forms of empire and medicine today?

ANTH 390.001: Global Health & Biosecurity

Melissa Salm
MWF 12:20PM – 1:10PM
This course provides a critical introduction to sociocultural anthropological perspectives on global health and biosecurity. Global health refers to a rapidly growing field of research and practice concerned with the prevention, detection, and response to population-level health threats worldwide. Biosecurity refers to the measures that are taken up to protect the health of humans and animals against harmful biological agents, like disease-causing pathogens or toxins. We will explore how biosecurity logics and frameworks reshape contemporary global health practices – from disease surveillance and pathogen-discovery to border control and emergency response – while examining the broader social and ethical implications of viewing global public health challenges through a security lens. In Part 1 of the course, we will examine how health threats become security issues; in Parts 2 and 3, we will analyze how we try to control them; and in Part 4, we will discuss why these efforts often fall short.

ANTH 390.002: Alternative Health Futures: Rethinking Care and Well-Being

Emily Curtin
TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM
In an age of economic, social, and ecological precarity, many Americans are not feeling good. At the same time, privatized health systems and individualized forms of self-care are proving insufficient to sustain collective well-being. But does it have to be this way? This course reframes the current moment of crisis as an opportunity to imagine new ways of organizing care and community for the greater good. Drawing on ethnographic case studies and readings from history, feminist thought, and decolonial theory, we will explore how communities around the world have built alternative systems of healing, mutual aid, and social support in the face of inequality and crisis. Taking inspiration from these examples, students will collaborate to think creatively about how we might work towards more equitable and sustainable health futures.

ANTH 422: Anthropology and Human Rights

Dafna Rachok
TuTh 12:30PM – 1:45PM
An examination of human rights issues from an anthropological perspective, addressing the historical formation of rights, their cross-cultural context and the emergence of humanitarian and human rights organizations on a global scale.

ANTH 432: Science, Society, Middle East

Ana Maria Vinea
TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM
This class explores science and society in the modern Middle East. Drawing on works from anthropology and history, it investigates how science interacts with, is shaped by, and reflects wider processes and formations such as nationalism, colonialism, religion, subject formation, or cultural production. Previously offered as ARAB 353.

ANTH 473: Body & Subject

Emily Curtin
TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM
Anthropological and historical studies of cultural constructions of bodily experience and subjectivity are reviewed, with emphasis on the genesis of the modern individual and cultural approaches to gender and sexuality.

ANTH 750: Seminar in Medical Anthropology

Dafna Rachok
Th 3:30PM – 7:00PM
Specially designed for, but not restricted to, students who are specializing in medical anthropology. Medicine as part of culture; medicine and social structure viewed crossculturally; medicine in the perspective of anthropological theory; research methods. A special purpose is to help students plan their own research projects, theses, and dissertations.

ANTH 860: Art of Ethnography

Glenn Hinson
TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM
A field-based exploration of the pragmatic, ethical, and theoretical dimensions of ethnographic research, addressing issues of experience, aesthetics, authority, and worldview through the lens of cultural encounter. Field research required.

COMM 375: Environmental Advocacy

Haley Schneider
TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM
Explores rhetorical means of citizen influence of practices affecting our natural and human environment; also, study of communication processes and dilemmas of redress of environmental grievances in communities and workplace.

COMM 378: Environmental Filmmaking

Julia Haslett
TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM
A workshop to study and create non-fiction films about the environment. The course examines aesthetic, narrative, and representational strategies with an eye to how these films can contribute to critical conversations about our species’ impact on the natural world. Special attention will be paid to questions of environmental justice and the disproportionate effects of environmental hazards on communities of color and low-income communities.

COMP 380H: Technology, Ethics, and Culture

Tessa Joseph-Nicholas
TuTh 2:00-3:15pm

COMP 380 explores social, historical, and ethical issues arising from individuals’, groups’, and societies’ design and use of computers, the Internet, and information technologies.

Coming soon!

ENEC 201/201H: Environment and Society

Gregory Gangi
MWF 10:10AM- 11:00AM
Human-environment interactions are examined through analytical methods from the social sciences, humanities, and sciences. The focus is on the role of social, political, and economic factors in controlling interactions between society and the environment in historical and cultural contexts. Three lecture hours and one recitation hour a week.

ENEC 201H: Environment and Society

Gregory Gangi
MWF 12:20PM – 1:10PM
Human-environment interactions are examined through analytical methods from the social sciences, humanities, and sciences. The focus is on the role of social, political, and economic factors in controlling interactions between society and the environment in historical and cultural contexts. Three lecture hours and one recitation hour a week.

GEOG 240: Introduction to Environmental Justice

Danielle Purifoy
MWF 1:25PM – 2:15PM
Environmental justice is about social equity and its relationship to the environment. This course provides an introduction to the principles, history, and scholarship of environmental justice. It traces the origins of the movement in the US and globally and its relationship to environmentalism. Students will use case studies and engagement to become familiar with environmental justice concerns related to food systems, environmental health, climate change, and economic development.

GEGO 259: Society and Environment in Latin America

Anthony Dest
MWF 11:15AM – 12:05PM
This survey course examines political, cultural, and biophysical dimensions of human- environment relations across the ecologically diverse and historically rich region of Latin America. It draws on multiple data sources, perspectives, and media to explore sub-regions and their biocultural histories, including the Caribbean, Andes, Amazon, Central and North America, and their relationship with the United States.

GEGO 266: Society and Environment in Southeast Asia

Christian Lentz
TuTh 9:30AM – 10:45AM
This survey integrates sociological, biophysical, and geographical elements to examine interactions of population and environment across the ecologically-diverse and historically-rich region of Southeast Asia. Draws on multiple data sources, perspectives, and media to explore Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, the Philippines, and neighboring countries.

GEOG 435: Global Environmental Justice

Shorna Allred
TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM
This advanced course brings geographical perspectives on place, space, scale, and environmental change to the study of environmental justice. In lectures, texts, and research projects, students examine environmental concerns as they intersect with racial, economic and political differences. Topics include environmental policy processes, environmental justice movements, environmental health risks, conservation, urban environments, and the role of science in environmental politics and justice. (GHA)

HNRS 089, Section 001: Medicine and Narrative – Writing COVID/Writing Us

Terry Holt
W 2:30-5:00pm
A workshop in autobiographical and creative short story, focusing on the complex connections between story-telling, interpretive skill, and the practice of medicine. Students will write and present autobiographical and and creative short stories about illness and medical care; the seminar will meet weekly to discuss these stories, attempting to identify and articulate the key issues each story expresses about what it means to be sick, what it might mean to take care of others in their illness. The writing and (especially) interpretive skills acquired in this workshop are directly valuable to anyone contemplating a career in medicine, but are equally valuable to anyone who might at some point encounter (in themselves or in someone they care for) the trauma of illness. In addition to the weekly workshop, participants will have one-on-one conferences with the instructor (himself an MD with an international reputation as a writer). A semester-long journal, focusing on the reverberations of the pandemic on the writer’s daily (actual and interior) life, will form the basis for a final project, which may (at student option) be in the form of written narrative, an audio composition, or a film, composed using the tools available at the University’s Media Resources Center.

HNRS 390, Section 004: Premodern Pandemics

Henry Gruber
MW 5:05-6:20pm

Premodern Pandemics takes a multidisciplinary approach to the study of pandemic diseases and their effects on history in the period before ca. 1600 CE. We will integrate the close reading of primary source accounts with the latest research in the fields of epidemiology and ancient pathogen genetics. Our case studies begin in the ancient Mediterranean and include the so-called Plague of Athens, the Antonine and Cyprian plagues of the Roman Empire, and the great bubonic plague outbreaks known as the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death. We will then cross the Atlantic and examine the role of disease in the encounter between Europeans, Africans, and Indigenous Americans after 1492. Students will work on their writing skills, engage in a group digital project, and present on scholarly articles, all leading up to a major research paper.

HPM 662 / PLCY 662: Global Health and Human Rights

Benjamin Meier
TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM
Course focuses on rights-based approaches to health, applying a human rights perspective to selected public health policies, programs, and interventions. Students will apply a formalistic human rights framework to critical public health issues, exploring human rights as both a safeguard against harm and a catalyst for health promotion.

IDST 112I: Death and Dying

Jeannie Loeb, Jocelyn Chua
MoWe 12:20PM – 1:10PM
Death and dying are universal human experiences. Yet there are cultural and historical variations in how we define and experience death and dying. This course explores the concepts of death and dying from three different disciplines (examples may include, but are not limited to, Anthropology, English and Comparative Literature, and Psychology and Neuroscience). This course will consider similarities and differences between the discipline research methodologies and introduce students to data literacy and principles of evidence.

IDST 114I: Science Fiction, the Environment, and Vulnerable Communities
Michelle Haskin, Priscilla Layne, Tanya Shields
MoWe 12:20PM – 1:10PM

This course focuses on the question of how the genre of science fiction has been used to address the world’s environmental concerns and how these concerns affect communities differently depending on their gender, race, and class. The course investigates global environmental challenges including resources, overpopulation, consumption, and climate change. Emphasis will be placed on texts and characters created by women and ethnic minorities. Students will be introduced to comparative, global, intersectional, and interdisciplinary approaches.

IDST 124I: Pandemics: Ethics, Literature, and Culture

Jane Thrailkill, Michele Rivkin-Fish, REBECCA WALKER
MoWe 11:15AM – 12:05PM
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed life dramatically for millions of people. Yet its realities – social distancing, quarantine, protective masks, job loss, education disruption, anxiety, loneliness and death, have been part of life during pandemics and epidemics across time and global space. This course brings three specific lenses and sets of methods to bear on experiences of pandemics – those of literature, anthropology, and philosophy. Themes of care, resource inequalities, stigma, and knowledge production are highlighted.

MEJO 469: Health Communication and Marketing

Rebecca Fish
MoWe 12:20PM – 1:35PM
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 569: Behavioral Science Health Communication

Francesca Dillman Carpentier
TuTh 12:30PM – 1:45PM
In this course, students are provided with an in-depth understanding of how people make health decisions and what motivates them to act. Then, through discussions, hands-on exercises, and case studies of health campaigns, students learn how to apply behavioral science to identify, dissect, and determine the best communication solutions for some of the most important challenges facing healthcare today.

PHIL140: Knowledge and Society

Will Conner
MoWeFr 8:00AM – 8:50AM
An examination of questions about knowledge, evidence, and rational belief as they arise in areas of social life such as democratic politics, the law, science, religion, and education.

PHIL 165.002: Bioethics

Ian Cho
TuTh 8:00AM – 9:15AM
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 165.002: Bioethics

Ava Geenen
MoWeFr 11:15AM – 12:05PM
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 368 / ENEC 368: Environmental Ethics

Harry Lloyd
TuTh 2:00PM – 3:15PM
The meaning of environmental values and their relation to other values; the ethical status of animals, species, wilderness, and ecosystems; the built environment; environmental justice; ecofeminism; obligations to future generations.

PSYC 504-001: Health Psychology

Karen Gil
TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM

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

PSYC 504-002: Health Psychology

Karen Gil
TuTh 12:30PM – 1:45PM

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

PUBH 420: HIV/AIDS Course

Ronald Strauss
Tu 5:00PM – 6:15PM
This course offers participants a multidisciplinary perspective on HIV/AIDS — its etiology, immunology, epidemiology and impact on individuals and society. The course will ask what lessons about pandemics can be learned from studying HIV/AIDS, with a specific focus on parallels with COVID-19. Open to undergraduate, graduate, and professional students.

RELI 220: Religion and Medicine

Jessica Boon
MoWe 12:20PM – 1:10PM
This course will deal with global interactions of religion, health care, medical ethics, disability, and the body in the past and present.

RELI 724: Ethnographic Methods

Lauren Leve
Tu 2:00PM – 4:50PM
This course engages the practices, politics, ethics, and epistemology of ethnography as a technique of data production, analysis, and representation. While we will privilege issues and themes related to the study of religion, the course offers a broad, multidisciplinary approach to the construction and execution of ethnographic research.

RELI 824 Body, Materiality, History

Jessica Boon
Mo 3:35-6:25pm
In this graduate seminar, we will address theories of the body in the study of history, ranging from theorists who make historical arguments to scholars who apply theoretical approaches to premodern religion to the necessity of historically situating theorists themselves. After three sessions covering key terms from 20thcentury theorists of the body, we will expand our standard notions of “the body” by drawing on developments in scientific and medical approaches to defining the body, then turn to disability studies to consider the lived experience of ‘medicalized’ bodies and to theories of embodied materiality that examine how bodies do not stop at the skin. Only then will we delve into the ways that critical race studies, postcolonial and decolonial theory, and gender, transgender, and sexuality studies aid in our study of religion and history. Historical case studies will be taken from scholarship on premodern Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as well as Incan religion, with other religions and eras touched on in briefly. Ultimately, this course proposes that certain kinds of historical analysis do not just apply theory to premodern sets of data, but in fact generate theory that can challenge or extend contemporary approaches.

SOCI 421: Environmental Sociology

Anna Gardner
TuTh 8:00AM – 9:15AM
This course focuses on the interaction between humans and their natural environments. Students will investigate the causes and consequences of environmental problems and their connections to dominant economic and political structures, cultural values, population dynamics, resource consumption, technologies, and systems of inequality.

SOCI 422: Sociology of Mental Health and Illness

Grace Franklyn
MoWeFr 2:30PM – 3:20PM
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 (include both sections)

Y. Claire Yang
TuTh 3:30PM – 4:45PM
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 363: Experiences of Disease and Health through Hispanic Literature and Culture

Juan González Espitia
TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM
Prerequisite, SPAN 301 or 302; or permission from the instructor. This courseseeks new perspectives on disease, literature, and culture in the Hispanic milieu. We will examine texts that present disease as theme, as aesthetic approach, as self-representation, or as metaphor in the Spanish-speaking world.

WGST 235: Motherhood: Politics and Representation

Candice Merritt
MoWe 3:35PM – 4:50PM
This course focuses on how institutions and experiences of motherhood are shaped by race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and religion, giving particular attention to popular notions of ”good” and ”bad” mothers, explorations of maternal feelings, and examinations of mothering as gendered labor and care.

WGST 388: The International Politics of Sexual and Reproductive Health
Karen Booth
TuTh 11:00AM – 12:15PM
Prerequisite, WGST 101. Permission of the instructor. Takes a feminist political economy perspective on debates over current health issues of international concern, including abortion, population control, and sexually transmitted infections. Focuses on the United States, Mexico, and Kenya, as well as on international organizations and social movements.

WGST 890: Queer and Trans Ecologies
M Chatterjee | Mo 11:15am-2:15pm
The omnipresence of climate change, although with differential impacts, yearns for alternate methodologies of introspection and analysis. This graduate-level course engages with insights from queer and transgender studies to grapple with climate change and possibilities of (un)becoming that may move us towards responsible ways of relating to one another. Working with scholarship on queer and trans ecologies, a scope that is transdisciplinary and transnational, and emphasizing the co-belongings of race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, and nation, we will study the framings of ontologies and objects amidst climate change, and how we can collectively reimagine ecological entanglements and environmental just-ness.

C-START (Carolina Students Taking Academic Responsibility through Teaching) offers 1-credit, student-designed and student-taught seminars open to all undergraduates. These Pass/Fail courses meet once a week and explore unique, interdisciplinary topics that reflect the interests and expertise of fellow students. Each course is developed under the guidance of a faculty mentor, giving student-instructors the chance to gain teaching experience while creating learning opportunities that go beyond the traditional classroom.

 

SPCL 400.301 | Roots to Remedy: The Intersection of Holistic Healing and Modern Medicine

Student Instructors: Roshni Arun & Sai Srihitha Dommata
Faculty Mentor: Amanda Corbett
Tuesday, 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
210 Graham Memorial
Holistic health practices have been integral to healing traditions across the world for centuries. However, many of these practices, particularly those of marginalized communities, are erased due to stigmatization, lack of formal documentation, and limited scientific validation. Roots to Remedy: The Intersection of Holistic Healing and Modern Medicine explores the cultural, historical, and medical significance of these healing traditions, examining their role in both historical and contemporary healthcare.

This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying holistic health by focusing on three major global traditions: Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and Indigenous healing practices. Through case studies, guest lectures, hands-on workshops, and interactive discussions, students will engage with the foundational principles of these healing systems while critically analyzing the challenges they face in modern healthcare.

SPCL 400.302 | The Mind’s Eye: Foundations of Brain Imaging and Clinical Applications

Student Instructors: Suhan Asaigoli & Aryan Kodali
Faculty Mentor: Eric Hastie
Wednesday, 4;00 pm – 6:00 pm
212 Graham Memorial
This course offers an introduction to the field of neuroradiology, focusing on brain and spine imaging techniques, neuroanatomy, and translating neuroradiology in clinical contexts. Through interactive learning, experiential engagement, and research, students will gain a basic understanding of imaging modalities, engage with researchers and physicians in the field of neuroradiology, explore real-world applications, and complete a creative capstone project integrating course concepts.

SPCL 400.305 | Medical Ethics in an Age of Political Uncertainty

Student Instructor: Katherine Guittari
Faculty Mentor: Bradley Hammer
Monday, 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm
210 Graham Memorial
Does assisting in a patient’s death conflict with the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm”? What are the ethical limits of editing embryos to prevent disease or enhance certain traits? Can AI be trusted in clinical decision-making, and who is liable when a mistake is made? The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) includes “adherence to ethical principles” among the competencies required of medical school graduates. However, undergraduate pre-health requirements rarely equip students to critically engage with ethical dilemmas, instead prioritizing coursework in the sciences. This knowledge gap poses an issue; in an era when medical topics—from reproductive rights to vaccine mandates—are deeply politicized, the ability to reason through complex ethical issues without succumbing to personal biases is essential for aspiring healthcare professionals.

In the course, Medical Ethics in an Age of Political Uncertainty, students will first acquire the bases of argumentative techniques in order to then apply them in unbiased medical ethics discourse. Additionally, this discussion-based course will equip pre-health students to thoughtfully engage with contentious topics that will arise in their future fields of work.

SPCL 400.308 | Emulating Frankenstein: Constructing the Body Through Literature and Language

Student Instructor: Catherine Pabalate
Faculty Mentor: Jane Thrailkill
Monday, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
302 Murphey Hall
Through research in biology, we understand our bodies through our genes, cells, and organ systems. However, how do we craft our bodies through the humanities, specifically literature and language? This course will observe how our bodies are ingrained in social, political, and cultural contexts, and, by observing these systems, we will begin to understand the ways our bodies are viewed, distinguished, measured, compared, and even rejected. This course is an interdisciplinary research avenue that draws upon scholarship in literature, rhetoric, Medical Anthropology, History, and Women’s and Gender Studies, and it will look at a variety of mediums, from memoir and poetry to film and video games, to view our bodies under intersectional lenses.

SPCL 400.310 | The Future of Pain Therapeutics

Student Instructor: Taanvii Verma
Faculty Mentor: Sarah Linnsteadt
Wednesday, 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
104 Greenlaw Hall
Chronic pain is a silent epidemic, affecting millions of individuals worldwide, posing significant challenges for both patients and healthcare providers. It is associated with severe health consequences that can disrupt everyday tasks and diminish quality of life. Despite its prevalence, current treatments often have limitations of partial relief and carry risks such as addiction, limited efficacy for certain pain conditions, and a primary focus on symptom management rather than addressing underlying neurobiological mechanisms. The Future of Pain Therapeutics explores the groundbreaking innovations reshaping how we understand and treat chronic pain, from regenerative stem cell therapies and deep brain stimulation to ancient Eastern practices like acupuncture and mindfulness. Through journal clubs, patient case studies, and immersive media, we will examine the science, ethics, and broader relevance behind each therapeutic approach. This course will challenge students to rethink how pain is understood and treated, equipping them with the knowledge to bridge innovation and compassion in the pursuit of more effective, transformative care.