BA Art History and History

Bodies in History provides an introduction to medicine in modern Western culture from 1500-2000. You will learn about the themes explored by historians of medicine including: class, race, gender and national identity. Areas of study include, Renaissance Anatomy and Eugenics.

To provide an introduction to medicine in modern Western culture, from c 1500- c 2000. To show how, through a focus on bodies (human and social), historians of medicine address themes such as class, race, gender, national identity, economic life and cultural production, and how scientific and medical theories and practices can be understood as part of wider histories.

By the end of this unit, students will have acquired a knowledge of the outlines of modern history of medicine; skills in linking ‘body histories’ to wider contexts; critical abilities in analysing historical arguments; experience of presenting historical arguments in written seminar responses; and experience of presenting oral arguments in seminar discussions. In addition, students taking the 20 credit unit will be able to find and research a topic of their own choosing; to find and assess critically primary and secondary sources; to write, with full scholarly apparatus, a report on their individual research project.

This unit can also be taken as a 10 credit version (HSTM10272).

Lecture content

• Bodies in History: A Course Introduction
• Bodies Explored: Renaissance Anatomy
• Bodies Ordered: Enlightenment Taxonomies
• Bodies Analyzed: The Medicine of Hospitals and Corpses
• Dirty Bodies : Constitution, Contagion, and 19th-Century Epidemics
• Bodies and Minds: Psychiatry and Fin-de-Siécle Culture
• Infected Bodies: Germs, Microbiology and Everyday Life
• Better Bodies: Evolution and Eugenics at the Turn of the Century
• Calibrating Bodies: Scientific Medicine and the Machine Age
• Productive Bodies: Modern States and the Price of Health
• Patient Bodies: Medicine and Consumerism, 1950-2010
• Review and revision session

The course meets for one two-hour session. These will include a lecture followed by a practical workshop. The lectures will treat the subject synthetically; the workshops are intended for closer critical investigation of particular issues raised in the week's required reading. Attendance at BOTH lectures and workshops is required.

2 hour examination (25%); practical assessment (25%); written project (50%)

Students may ask questions at any time during lectures and seminars. Teaching staff can usually answer specific queries by email or during office hours, and will provide contact details in the course handbook or at lectures. All submitted coursework will be returned with annotations and an assessment sheet explaining the mark awarded.

• Brunton, D (2004) Medicine Transformed: Health, Disease and Society in Europe, 1800-1930.
• Cooter R and Pickstone J (2000) Medicine in the Twentieth Century. Harwood Academic
• Elmer, P (2004) The Healing Arts: Health, Disease and Society in Europe, 1500-1800.
• Porter, R (2003) Blood and Guts.