Expanded Course Description:

This course focuses on ‘the patient’ – both as a social construction and as an active agent.  In the first section of the course, we consider the ways in which patients are constructed, used, and understood by those who have power over their lives.  To do this we look at the creation of ‘the patient’ as a medico-sociological typology, as an institutionalized entity, and as a subject for study – analyzing how race and gender and understandings of what constitutes ‘normalcy’ intersect in this process.  In the second and third sections of the course, we consider how patients construct themselves, analysing patient accounts of health and illness and evaluating patient agency.

This course is run as a seminar with two class leaders chosen to prepare summaries of weekly readings and discussion materials for each class.  Attendance is mandatory.  Students are expected to come to class prepared to discuss critically the assigned reading and also any additional documents or ‘texts’ chosen for that week.  Weekly journal entries serve as an intellectual reflection on class readings, lectures and discussions.  The seminar readings are academic articles on the weekly topic, but the documents range from architectural drawings for hospitals, to pages from a patient case file, to art.

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