HESO Courses

AP/SOSC 1801 6.00
Health Controversies: Issues of Health, Illness and Society

Crosslisted: AP/SOSC 1809 This course is a part of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies General Education Program and will fulfill the General Education requirements for Social Science. It is designed to provide …

AP/SOSC 2102 3.00
Health Systems in the Global Society

This course explores Health Systems from a comparative and international perspective. It analyses health changes, health technology and their impact on health care delivery, medical practice, health care funding and discusses the targets and the …

AP/SOSC 2110 6.00
A Critical Study of Health & Society

In this course, students gain a critical understanding of the values and the beliefs that inform how health is conceptualized and experienced, and how these concepts are negotiated and change over time.  Drawing on a …

AP/SOSC 2112 3.00
Graphic Medicine

This introductory course in arts and medicine will explore the role of comics, graphic novels and memoir within the larger project of narrative medicine and its relationship to healthcare and healing. These visual narratives effectively …

AP/SOSC 2150 3.00
Environmental Justice and Health

This course examines the ways environmental factors intersect with social and economic inequalities to produce significant health disparities, particularly for low-income, racial, and Indigenous communities. Specifically, the course focuses on contemporary themes in the environmental …

AP/SOSC 2152 3.00
Sleep, Health and Medical Science

Sleep matters to our health, to our social interactions, and to our medical and biological knowledges. This course treats sleep as a Res publica – a “public affair” – by introducing students to the historical …

HH/HLST 3015 3.00
Pharmaceutical Politics and Policy

Examines the place of pharmaceuticals in the Canadian health care system. Focuses on conflicts among stakeholders in policy formation, costs and physician prescribing behaviour.

AP/SOSC 3090 6.00
Medicine and North American Society in Historical Perspective

This course explores people’s conceptions of health, their experiences of disease, illness and disease, focusing on North America from the time of contact between Europeans and Aboriginal peoples to the present. The course draws on …

AP/SOSC 3101 3.00
Health and Development in the Global South

This course explores critical health issues in the Global South and its relationship to the political economy of development. It analyses the socio-economic systems, the morbidity-mortality patterns, the demographic and epidemiological transitions and the triple …

AP/SOSC 3103 3.00
Health: International and Comparative Perspectives

Health is much more than the absence of disease. Health does not lie in the operating room of hospitals or in the laboratories of pharmaceutical companies. Health is the basis for development, but development is, …

AP/SOSC 3112 3.00
Health, Storytelling and Media

Our ideas about life, death, illness, health, as well as our own identities and experiences, are defined and expressed through stories. Story and storytelling have also been utilized by various groups as a medium through …

AP/SOSC 3113 6.00
Health Care Professions: Theories and Issues

This course explores the concept of “profession” in the context of health care work. It examines the role of the state, patriarchy and corporate interests in encouraging medical dominance, and in excluding other healers from …

AP/SOSC 3115 3.00
Selected Topics in Health and Society: Wellness & Wellbeing: Critical Perspectives

Today, concepts of wellness and wellbeing prevail in both popular and medical discourses about health. But what do these concepts really mean? When, how, and why have they come to predominate so centrally in our …

AP/SOSC 3116 6.00
The Patient

This course will focus on ‘the patient’ – both as a social construction and as an active agent. In the first section of the course, we will consider the ways in which patients are constructed …

AP/SOSC 3118 3.00
Drugs and Society

Drug production and drug use often bring conflicts between those who enjoy or profit from them and those who deplore their effects. This course examines the forces behind these conflicts, their influence on public policies …

AP/SOSC 3121 3.00
Race and Health

This course takes an intersectional approach to examining health. Intersections and interactions of race with other social, political and economic factors such as gender, class and ability are studied as the major determinants of the …

AP/SOSC 3122 3.00
Childhood and Health

This course examines the interdisciplinary complexity of what constitutes our definition of the “healthy” child. Students examine cross-cultural definitions of “childhood,” and learn that to be “healthy” entails more than a mere absence of disease. …

AP/SOSC 3168 3.00
Environmental Health

In this course we will examine environmental health from a social science perspective. Our focus will be the sources of conflicts between health professionals, lay people policy makers and others over how environments cause diseases. …

AP/SOSC 3169 3.00
Work & Health

This course explores the relationship between work, labour, global markets and health. It draws on political economy, feminist theory and other critical theoretical perspectives to consider how ideas about value, productive, and reproductive work interface …

AP/ANTH 3190 6.00
Nutritional Anthropology: Food and Eating in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Crosslisted: AP/ANTH 3190 This course examines nutritional anthropology from a biocultural perspective, stressing the social and cultural determinants of food use in industrial and developing societies. It examines the linkages between food, health and ethnic …

AP/ANTH 3200 3.00
The Anthropology of International Health

Emphasizing the interplay of culture, history and political economy, this course explores health problems in the developing world. Topics include analyses of international health development ideology and practice, case studies in infectious diseases, maternal mortality, …

HH/HLST 3230 3.00
Integrated Health Systems in Canada

Examines and critiques the elements and concepts of an evolving integrated health system (HIS) in Canada. The evolution and the socio-political-economic impact of this new evolving holistic and integrated health-healing model from an inter-disciplinary and …

AP/ANTH 3280 6.00
Anthropology & Psychiatry Globally

This course is concerned with furthering the mutual relevance of social anthropology and psychiatry, and with developing a true anthropology of suffering. It integrates theories and findings from the fields of medical anthropology, transcultural psychiatry, …

AP/ANTH 3330 6.00
Health and Illness in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Comparative perspectives on health, illness and medical systems are studied from the viewpoint of anthropology and related disciplines. Emphasis is placed on understanding the roles of the practitioner and patient in their social and cultural …

AP/SOSC 3362 6.00
Law, Medicine and Madness

We are a culture fascinated with the concept of “madness.” The mad person has been simultaneously represented in popular culture as genius, artistic, comedic and dangerous. There is something profoundly stable about the historical positioning …

HH/PSYC 3490 3.00
Adult Development and Aging

Crosslisted: GL/PSYC 3310 An examination of data and theories relating to the psychology of adult development and aging. Major topics include biological and psychological theories of aging; age changes in intelligence, personality and social relations; …

HH/HLST 3510 3.00
Poverty and Health in Canada: Current Evidence and Policy Responses

Examines evidence related to the increasing incidence of poverty in Canada and the mechanisms by which poverty threatens the health of both the poor and not poor. Explores various potential policy responses.

AP/GWST 3511 3.00
Women’s Sexualities

Crosslisted: AP/WMST 3511, GL/WMST 3511, GL/SOSC 3990 This course examines the constructions of women’s sexualities historically and currently. The influence of religion, medicine, law, media and the state are critically examined as are women’s attempts …

AP/SOCI 3550 3.00
Sociology of Aging

Crosslisted: AP/HREQ 3550, AP/SOCI 3560 This course examines interpersonal, cultural, demographic and political aspects of aging and retirement. Gender, class and other major factors are discussed, along with familial, government and self-help responses to seniors’ …

AP/GWST 3554 3.00
Women and Madness

Crosslisted: AP/WMST 3553, GL/WMST 3553 Critically analyzes conceptualizations of women, mental health normalcy, mental illness and madness using intersectional and critical feminist frameworks. Draws on scholarly literature from a range of disciplines as well as …

AP/HREQ 3761 3.00
Canada’s Social Policy

Crosslisted: AK/POLS 3761 Examines Canadian federal, provincial and municipal programs aimed at those outside the paid labour force. Programs covered include health care, child care services and benefits, old age pensions, social assistance and disability. …

SC/STS 3780 3.00
Biomedicine in Socio-Historical Context

Crosslisted: AP/SOSC 3780, SC/STS 3780 An examination of the changing relationship between biomedical research and technologies, medical practice, and social structures since 1800. Topics may include: risk and medical screening, public health, medical specialization, tropical …

AP/SOCI 3820 6.00
Sociology of Health and Health Care

Crosslisted: GL/SOCI 3230 Social factors related to health and physical and mental illness will be discussed, including comparative examinations of the healing process. The social organization of systems of health care will be explored, including …

AP/SOSC 3920 6.00
Disability and Society

Crosslisted: AP/SOSC 3920 This course examines disability as a social identity and as a social construct, exploring how and why experiences and conceptualizations of disability vary historically and trans-culturally, and the intersectionality of disability with …

AP/SOSC 3921 6.00
Indigenous Health & Healing

Indigenous communities deal with alarming rates of health problems, such as diabetes, compared to non-Indigenous populations, but many of these health issues have proven resistant to conventional biomedical treatments. At the same time, Indigenous cultures …

AP/SOCI 3950 3.00
Exploring Disability

Drawing on traditional and contemporary theoretical frameworks for understanding disability, this course introduces students to the field of disability studies. Within a comparative perspective, the course explores legal frameworks, social policy, advocacy and rights movements, …

AP/SOSC 3993 3.00
Strategies of Social Science Research

This is a course in critical social science methodology and is designed to improve students’ abilities to read and evaluate social research. The major research methods will be studied using exemplary texts and hands on …

AP/SOCI 4072 3.00
Sociology of Human Reproduction

This course seeks to describe and analyse contemporary rapid social change occurring in the knowledge, conduct and regulation of human reproduction, investigating this change across multiple institutional sites such as techno-science, kinship, the health system …

AP/SOSC 4140 6.00
A Health & Society Seminar

This research seminar examines theoretical and applied problems in health and society. It introduces students to a variety of research methods and evaluative skills, which they apply in their own analysis of a particular problem. …

AP/SOSC 4141 3.00
Women and Health

This course focuses on developing research, analytical and writing skills through individual research, discussion, group collaboration, and individual and group writing. The goal of this course is to research the area of women and health …

AP/SOSC 4142 3.00
Health, Medicine and Creative Resistance

This course considers the way in which researchers and practitioners have used arts-based methods and methodologies in order to engage communities, disseminate findings and intervene in critical issues related to health. Students will examine how …

AP/SOSC 4144 6.00
Engaging Health in the Community

This course applies academic knowledge of health, health advocacy, and health care systems to experience in community settings through classroom study and the application of social science research methods in student placements in health-related organizations …

AP/SOSC 4145 3.00
The Brain, Self and Society

This course is designed for fourth year students in social sciences interested in neurosciences and psychiatry. It introduces students to different disciplinary perspectives on neurosciences, the self, neuropsychiatry, and narratives of the brain in contemporary …

AP/SOSC 4146 3.00
Health and Humanitarianism

This course is an interdisciplinary examination of health and humanitarianism, with particular attention to how this field is shaped by historical, social and political-economic forces. The course focuses on the key actors, institutions and ideologies …

AP/SOSC 4147 6.00
Health and Place

This interdisciplinary course presents health as rooted in and shaped, informed and understood by place. Students learn that health and place is about climate, geography, sociability, health democracy, landscape, the body, food, and culture. Working …

AP/SOSC 4148 3.00
Food and Health

This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the connections between food, health and society. Food is critical to our very survival. But beyond simply preventing starvation, how much we eat and which kinds of food …

AP/SOSC 4149 3.00
Epidemics and the Modern World: Local, National, and Global Configurations of Disease

Explores the changing interactions between epidemic disease, governance, and scientific knowledge since the nineteenth century. Widespread infections, pathological outbreaks, and emerging diseases are examined at the local, national, and global levels as both historical agents …

AP/SOSC 4150 3.00
Aging and Caregiving

Crosslisted: AP/SOSC 4150 We will examine the perceptions and the reality of caring for an older person. There are personal, family and societal implications as we look at innovations in caregiving, dealing with various disabilities …

AP/ANTH 4160 3.00
Anthropology and Indigenous Peoples’ Health

Contemporary and historical First Nations and Indigenous health issues are explored from a medical anthropological perspective. Using ethnographies, case studies and media-related resources, and focusing primarily within Canada, students critically analyze the cultural, political, and …

AP/SOCI 4300 3.00
Sociology of Health Care Systems

The course examines the theoretical models sociologists employ in analysing relationships within the health-care system. It shows how the medical and other health professions have developed in Canada within the context of the growth and …