Fall 2022 Course Offerings

The following courses are being offered during the Fall 2022 semester.

All of the courses listed are related to the health humanities and may qualify for health humanities related degree programs.

• Courses numbered 400 or above qualify for the English & Comparative Literature MA concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture and the English & Comparative Literature Graduate Certificate in Literature, Medicine, and Culture. Students with questions about either graduate program should contact Prof. Kym Weed.
  *Note: Advanced undergraduate students are permitted to enroll in graduate-level courses (600 and above), often with permission from the instructor.

• Undergraduate courses (100-400 level) and joint undergraduate-graduate courses (600-level) are likely to qualify for the Honors minor in Medicine, Literature, and Culture or English & Comparative Literature concentration in Science, Medicine, and Literature. Students should consult with their academic advisor to confirm degree requirements.

English & Comparative Literature

ENGL 163: Introduction to Health Humanities
Kym Weed | TuTh 9:30-10:45am

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 248: Intersectionality – Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Social Justice (cross listed with AMST 248 and POLI 248)
Michele Berger, Michelle Robinson | MoWe 11:15am-12:05pm + Recitation

The first goal of this super course is to give students real tools for how to address multiple modes of difference and identity formations like race, gender, class, and sexuality.

ENGL 268: Medicine, Literature, and Culture
Jane Thrailkill | MoWe 8:00-8:50am + Recitation

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

ENGL 300i: Professional Writing in Health and Medicine
Jordynn Jack | MWF 10:10-11:00am

Advanced practice with writing about health from medical and humanistic perspectives, ranging from grant proposals to qualitative research articles to the personal illness narrative.

ENGL 370: Race, Health, and Narrative
Cynthia Current | MWF 2:30-3:20pm

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 763: Introduction to Methods in Health Humanities
Kym Weed | Th 11:00am-2:00pm

This interdisciplinary graduate seminar will introduce students to topics and methods in health humanities. In recent years, scholars have sought to define the field of health humanities as a broader and more inclusive set of research practices and objects of study than related fields like medical humanities. Therefore, this course will sample critical and creative texts that represent this field-expanding trend. Students will read foundational critical texts in health humanities and related fields including medical humanities, narrative medicine, disability studies, medical anthropology, graphic medicine, and rhetoric of health and medicine along with a series of primary texts. Together, we will define the scope, methods, and values that constitute the field of health humanities.

African, African, American, and Diaspora Studies

AAAD 300: Cultures of Health and Healing in Africa
Lydia Boyd | TuTh 3:30-4:45pm

This course explores contemporary economic, political, and social factors influencing the health and welfare of African peoples. Emphasis is placed on understanding the cultural perspectives that shape non-Western experiences of health, disease, and notions of spiritual and physical well-being. Readings draw from the fields of anthropology, history, and public health.

American Studies

AMST 248: Intersectionality – Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Social Justice (cross listed with ENGL 248, POLI 248, and WGST249)
Michele Berger, Michelle Robinson | MoWe 11:15am-12:05pm + Recitation

The first goal of this super course is to give students real tools for how to address multiple modes of difference and identity formations like race, gender, class, and sexuality.

Anthropology

ANTH 53H: First-Year Seminar: Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Paul Leslie | TuTh 9:30-10:45am

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
Michele Rivkin-Fish | TuTh 12:30-1:45pm + Recitation

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 | MWF 1:25-2:15pm + Recitation

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: Women in Science (cross listed with WGST 278)
Nicole Else-Quest | MoWe 3:35-4:50pm

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 448: Health and Medicine in the American South
Martha King | MWF 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 582: Fieldwork with Social Models of Well-Being
Michele Rivkin-Fish | TuTh 5:00-6:15pm

Required preparation, at least one introductory cultural medical anthropology course. This course highlights approaches and organizations that pursue well-being through social relations and social change, rather than through medical treatment and cure. Students will: 1) learn the conceptual understandings that inform social models of well-being in disability studies/disability rights, occupational science, and critical gerontology; and 2) learn and apply anthropological methods of participant-observation fieldwork and interviewing in local organizations that implement these social models. Enrollment by instructor permission.

ANTH 714: Current Issues in Participatory Research: A Workshop Course
Angela Steusse | W 5:45-7:00pm

This one-hour course is open to UNC graduate students interested in Participatory Research (PR). It is required for the Graduate Certificate in PR and designed to integrate new students into the intellectual discussions and the PR community on campus.

Economics

ECON 450: Health Economics: Problems and Policy
TBA | TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm

Prerequisites, ECON 400 and 410; a grade of C or better in ECON 400 and 410 is required; permission of the instructor for students lacking the prerequisites. Economic analysis applied to problems and public policy in health care.

Environmental Sciences

ENVR 525: Water, Sanitation, Hygiene, and Global Health
Michael Fisher | TuTh 3:30-4:45pm

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. Previously offered as ENVR 682.

ENVR 705 One Health: Philosophy to Practical Integration (cross-listed with PUBH 705)
Mamie Harris, Jill Stewart | Mo 5:00-7:00pm
Mamie Harris, Jill Stewart | Th 8:00-9:15am

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 Critical Issues in Work, Worker, and Workplace Health (cross-listed with HBEH 785)
Laura Linnan, Maija Leff | Tu 12:30-3:30pm

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.

Geography

GEOG 52: First-Year Seminar: Political Ecology of Health and Disease
Michael Emch | TuTh 2:00-3:15pm

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
Michael Emch | TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm

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.

Health Behavior

HBEH 523: Development & Evaluation of Health Behavior Interventions
Abigail Hatcher & Melissa Cox | WeFr 11:15am-1:10pm

In this course students will:

• Work through case studies of domestic and global interventions
• Apply techniques to select, design, and implement across the Social Ecological Framework
• Create an evaluation plan for one health behavior approach
• Consolidate new skills in an intervention & evaluation “pitch”

The course is worth 4 credits; the pre-req is SPHG 352 or instructor permission. To register, search for HBEH 532 (the course is brand new and not yet listed in the course catalog).

HBEH 690: Special Topics in Health Behavior
Alexandra Lightfoot | We 5:45-7:00pm

This course is for graduate students interested in carrying out research in equitable partnership with, instead of on, communities. It fulfills one of the requirements for UNC’s Graduate Certificate in Participatory Research (GCPR) and is open to all graduate students. Students will be introduced to a variety of disciplinary and methodological approaches to community-engaged research. By focusing on cutting-edge participatory research underway here at UNC, students will begin to map out and become part of the GCPR community. Student work will be individual and collective, designing a participatory research project and strengthening this very community in the process of their learning.

Students are encouraged to take the course for credit in their first year of the Certificate program. Students are encouraged to take part in the GCPR annual welcome reception, workshops, presentations, and other intellectual events throughout the semester and their time in the Certificate program. The intent is for students to continue to remain engaged with faculty and community experts, build cross-sharing among members of the Certificate student cohort, and contribute actively to the community’s co-learning.

HBEH 700: Foundations of Health Equality, Social Justice and Human Rights
Derrick Matthews | Mo 2:30-5:15pm

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.

HBEH 785: Critical Issues in Work, Worker, and Workplace Health (cross-listed with ENVR 795)
Laura Linnan, Maija Leff | Tu 12:30-3:30pm

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.

Health Policy Management

HPM 571: Health and Human Rights
TBA | TuTh 3:30-4:45pm

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.

HPM 758: Underserved Populations and Health Reform
Ciara Zachary | Tu 5:00-8:00pm

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.

Information and Library Sciences

INLS 515: Consumer Health Information
Amelia Gibson | MoWe 6:00-7:15pm

Examines concepts of health, health conditions, policy, and information collections and services from social and cultural perspectives. Analysis and design for provision and access to consumer health information services.

Japanese

JAPN 482: Embodying Japan: The Cultures of Beauty, Sports, and Medicine in Japan
Dwayne Dixon | MWF 1:25-2:15pm

Explores Japanese culture and society through investigating changing concepts of the human body. Sources include anthropological and history materials, science fiction, and film.

Note: Some seats in this course are reserved for DAMES majors. Anyone may waitlist, and unused reserved seats will be released sometime on June 16.

Law

LAW 544: Health Privacy Law
TBA | TBA

Health Privacy Law covers law and policy of health care, medical research, and related information management. Students will explore HIPAA, the Common Rule, 21st Century Cures Act, Federal Trade Commission Act, sub-regulatory guidance for emerging technologies, rulemaking, and pending legislation. Grades are based on class participation and 2-3 short papers. Students should have completed courses in the first-year curriculum.

Media & Journalism

MEJO 562: Environmental and Science Documentary Television
Tom Linden | Th 3:30-6:15pm

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

Philosophy

PHIL 165: Bioethics
TBA | MWF 12:20-1:10pm
TBA | MWF 1:25-2:15pm

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.

Public Policy

PLCY 361: Health Policy in the United States
Carmen Gutierrez | TuTh 2:00-3:15pm

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

PLCY 373: Confronting Climate Change in the Anthropocene
Angel Hsu | TuTh 9:30-10:45am

Climate change-perhaps the defining issue of the 21st century-is a highly complex problem that requires interdisciplinary collaboration to develop policy responses. This course explores the science of climate change and uses theories from multiple disciplines, including law, political science, economics, and earth and atmospheric sciences, to frame solutions to this global challenge. Students will apply quantitative and qualitative tools to understand causes and impacts of climate change, as well as policy responses.

PLCY 575: Innovation, Science, and Public Policy
Jeffrey Warren | TuTh 9:30-10:45am

Introduction to analysis of science policy. Course explores how events transformed science’s role in American life and how science relates to industry and economic development. Topics include the mechanisms of allocating scientific resources, the commercialization of academic discoveries, regulating emerging technology, and achieving consensus on controversial scientific issues.

Psychology

PSYC 504: Health Psychology
Karen Gil | TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm
Karen Gil | TuTh 12:30-1:45pm

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

Prerequisites, PSYC 101 and 245.
Seat restriction periods: April 6th-July 29th and August 11th-August 24th. Majority of seats restricted to PSYC majors, NSCI majors, Cognitive Science minors, and Neuroscience minors only during the noted times

Public Health

PUBH 610: Introductory Spanish for Health Professionals
Elizabeth Tolman | Tu 5:00-6:30pm
Staff | W 5:45-7:15pm

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 705: One Health: Philosophy to Practical Integration (cross-listed with ENVR 705)
Mamie Harris, Jill Stewart | Mo 5:00-7:00pm
Mamie Harris, Jill Stewart | Th 8:00-9:15am

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.

PUBH 706: Advanced Health Policy for Clinicians
Sue Tolleson-Rinehart | W 2:30-5:10pm

An introduction to the fundamental organization, behavior, financing, and challenges of the health system of the United States. The course treats the entire edifice of American health care as “the American health system,” and intends to examine it in toto, including by comparing it to other national health systems, and in part, by examining critical components of the system. Students must be enrolled in the Population Health for Clinicians Concentration or permission of the instructor.

PUBH 711: Critical Issues in Global Health
Karar Ahsan, Marie Lina Excellent | TuTh 5:00-6:30pm

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
Adam Gilbertson | TBA

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.

Religious Studies

RELI 220: Religion and Medicine
Jessica Boon | TuTh 2:00-3:15pm

This course will deal with various interactions of religion and health care in the past and present.

RELI 421: Religion and Science
Randall Styers | TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm

This course explores the complex relation between religion and science in the modern world. Public disputes over teaching evolution in American schools serve as a central case study of this.

Sociology

SOCI 172: Introduction to Population Health in the United States
Bethany Stoutamire | MWF 2:30-3:20pm

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
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 | MWF 3:35-4:25pm

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
Yang Yang | TuTh 9:30-10:45am
Taylor Hargrove | TuTh 11:00am-12:15pm
Denise Mitchell | MWF 12:20-1:10pm

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.

Spanish

SPAN321: Spanish for the Medical Professions I
TBA | MWF 9:05-9:55am
TBA | TuTh 12:30-1:45pm
Muñoz-Hermoso | MWF 11:15am-12:05pm

Prerequisite, SPAN 261 or SPAN 267. 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.

SPAN328: Spanish for the Medical Professions II
TBA | MWF 10:10-11:00am
TBA | MWF 9:05-9:55am
Martin | MWF 12:20-1:10pm

Prerequisites, SPAN 261 and 321. 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.

Women’s and Gender Studies

WGST 278: Women in Science (cross listed with ANTH 278)
Nicole Else-Quest | MoWe 3:35-4:50pm

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: Reproductive Justice
Karen Booth | MoWe 3:35-4:50pm

This course introduces students to concepts, research, and activism now known as “reproductive justice.” We will discuss the history of the term and vision as developed by activism feminists of color. We will examine a variety of case studies or reproductive injustice and feminist responses in the United States, Latin America, South Asia, and subSaharan Africa. We will conclude by collectively planning a reproductive justice action for UNC/Chapel Hill. There is no pre-requisite for this course. First year students are especially encouraged to enroll.