HIST 277 Women and Community Health

This course explores the history of women as promoters of community health in the diverse cultures of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States. Although women have not traditionally held power in mainstream biomedical occupations and institutions women have nevertheless been critical to health and healing in local communities as caregivers activists and even scapegoats for disease. Furthermore women's role in community health has been heavily shaped by gendered constructions of the body disease and wellbeing. Thus while the focus of the course is on the social history of women's health and healing the theoretical framework of the course also aims to explore how ideologies of gender race class and sexuality shape the women's relationship to community health as both caregivers and health-seekers. The course is organized by a set of common themes that cut across time space and racial/ethnic boundaries in U.S. History. Themes include: spirituality and healing; work and health; sexuality and reproduction; activism for health justice.