Understanding the nature of health, sickness, and healing necessarily includes exploration of the historical, social, cultural, and economic contexts in which illness is defined and understood. It is in these contexts also that medical systems and specific sets of health care practices arise and evolve.
The wider study of health and medicine thus involves a number of disciplines, whose perspectives can complement and deepen the understandings derived from scientific knowledge and training in clinical skills that take primacy in medical training.
These include fields such as socio-cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, medical anthropology, population health, the sociology of health and illness, health psychology, the history of medicine, philosophy and ethics, and gender studies.
This minor provides the opportunity for students to combine later-year courses in related disciplines to explore the broader social contexts of health and the development of medical knowledge and bodily practice.
Learning Outcomes
- demonstrate understanding of the scope and intellectual approaches of at least two of the component disciplines to the study of health, medicine and the body;
- demonstrate understanding of the selected concepts and theories in those disciplines to the study of health, medicine, and the body;
- demonstrate understanding of the key points from the literature on health, medicine and the body; and
- demonstrate an ability to analyse and evaluate studies from the above literatures critically.
Requirements
The Health, Medicine and the Body Minor requires the completion of 24 units, which must include:
12 units from the completion of the following course(s):
ANTH2026 - Medicine, Healing and the Body (6 units)
BIAN2119 - Nutrition, Disease and the Environment (6 units)
GEND3001 - Posthuman Bodies (6 units)
PSYC3020 - Health Psychology (6 units)
12 units from the completion of the following course(s):
ANTH2025 - Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective (6 units)
ANTH2130 - Violence and Terror (6 units)
BIAN2128 - Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology (6 units)
BIAN3014 - Research Design and Analysis in Biological Anthropology (6 units)
DEMO2001 - Understanding Population Change (6 units)
ECON3004 - Health Economics (6 units)
PHIL2082 - Sex and Death: the Philosophy of Biology (6 units)
SOCY2022 - Environmental Sociology (6 units)
12 units from completion of the following course(s):
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| ANTH2026 | Medicine, Healing and the Body | 6 |
| BIAN2119 | Nutrition, Disease and the Environment | 6 |
| BIAN 2130: Ancient Medicine | ||
| BIOL 2191: Ecology Health & Disease | ||
| GEND 2025: Gender, Health and Embodiment | ||
| GEND 2026: Technoculture & the Body | ||
| PSYC3020 | Health Psychology | 6 |
| PSYC 3027: Late-Life Dev & Ageing | ||
| SOCY 3021: Socy Health and Illness |
12 units from completion of the following course(s):
| Code | Title | Units |
|---|---|---|
| ANTH2130 | Violence and Terror | 6 |
| ANTH 2132: Food for Thought | ||
| ARCH 2054: Arch of Death & Mortuary Prac | ||
| BIAN 2115: 'Race' & Human Genetic Var | ||
| BIAN 2120: Culture, Biol & Pop Dyn | ||
| BIAN2128 | Forensic Anthropology and Archaeology | 6 |
| BIAN3014 | Research Design and Analysis in Biological Anthropology | 6 |
| ECON3004 | Health Economics | 6 |
| GEND 2021: Trauma, Memory & Culture | ||
| HIST 2133: Race and Racism | ||
| PHIL2082 | Topics in the Philosophy of Biology | 6 |
| PHIL 2085: Applied Ethics | ||
| PHIL 2110: Social Philosophy | ||
| POLS 2076: Frankfurt School | ||
| POPS 2001: Population Studies | ||
| SCOM 3001: Science, Risk & Ethics | ||
| SOCY2022 | Environmental Sociology | 6 |