Overview | Summary of Courses

Offered By:	ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
Areas of Interest:	Health, Medicine and the Body

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,  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

• A grasp of the overall scope and intellectual approaches of at least two of the component disciplines which study health, medicine and the body
• An overview familiarity with selected concepts in those disciplines
• A familiarity with key points from the literature on health, medicine and the body
• An ability to evaluate studies from the above literatures critically

Requirements

This minor requires completion of 24 units, which must include:

A minimum of 12 units from the completion of core courses from the following list:

ANTH2026 – Medical Anthropology (6 units)

BIAN2119 – Nutrition, Disease & the Human Environment (6 units)

BIAN2125 – Ancient Health & Disease (6 units)

BIAN2130 – Ancient Medicine (6 units)

BIOL2191 – Ecology of Health & Disease (6 units)

GEND2025 – Gender, Health & Embodiment (6 units)

GEND2026 – Technoculture & the Body (6 units)

PSYC3020 – Health Psychology (6 units)

PSYC3027 – Late Life Development and Ageing (6 units)

SOCY3021 – Sociology of Health and Illness (6 units)

 

A maximum of 12 units from completion of courses from the following list:

ANTH2130 – Violence & Terror (6 units)

ANTH2132 – Food for Thought: Anthropological Theories of Food & Eating (6 units)

ARCH2054 – Archaeology of Death & Mortuary Practices (6 units)

BIAN2115 – ‘Race’ & Human Genetic Variation (6 units)

BIAN2120 – Culture, Biology & Population Dynamics (6 units)

BIAN2128 – Forensic Anthropology & Archaeology (6 units)

BIAN3014 – Research Design & Analysis in Biological Anthropology (6 units)

ECON3004 – Health Economics (6 units)

GEND2021 – Trauma, Memory & Culture (6 units)

HIST2133 – Human Variations & Racism in Western Culture, c.1450–1950 (6 units)

LAWS2219 – Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights (6 units)

PHIL2082 – Sex & Death: the Philosophy of Biology (6 units)

PHIL2085 – Applied Ethics (6 units)

PHIL2110 – Social Philosophy (6 units)

POLS2076 – Frankfurt School & Habermas (6 units)

POPS2001 – Population & Society (6 units)

SCOM3001 – Science, Risk & Ethics (6 units)

SOCY2022 – Environment & Society

The information published on the Study at ANU 2012 website applies to the 2012 academic year only. All information provided on this website replaces the information contained in the Study at ANU 2011 website.