Courses
Global Health Relevant Courses
Special Courses/Mini-Courses
Each term, campus visitors may offer special topics or mini- courses relevant to global health. Such courses will be posted here as they are announced.
Fall 2008
- **NEW**
LACS 490.001/HBEHED 710.003 LACS Public Health mini-course,10/6-31/08. Time, room TBA.
Contemporary Politics of Sexuality and Public Health in Latin America
Visiting professor Mario Pecheny
This course examines processes of politicization of sexuality and public health in Latin America, and their limits and tensions. We will discuss four main fields of political and social struggles: 1) “Women rights”: Feminist movements, gender perspectives, reproductive rights and reproductive health issues; 2) “HIV/AIDS”: HIV/AIDS movements, rights and policies; 3) “Non-heteronormative sexuality and gender”: GLBT movements, queer perspectives, sexual rights and issues; 4) “Drug use”: Drug users’ rights, drug policies and drug issues. In each field, some case studies will allow us to discuss both the specific features and the more general trends of those political processes: for example, emergency contraception and (illegal) abortion for the reproductive field. The analysis of those processes of politicization will allow us to critically revisit a Latin American tradition of framing social issues as collective, structural, political and historical, in opposition to a more hegemonic framing of issues as individual, contingent, non-political (i.e., private, natural) and “out-of-time”. The approach is twofold: on one hand, we select a political issue (e.g. abortion) and discuss the conflicts of rights that it entails (e.g. women rights vs. rights of the unborn). On the other hand, we analyze the political forms of contention around such rights, especially the formation of specific social movements.
- WINTER 2008, CEE 490: Sustainable Energy Development to South America. The Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute is pleased to announce the creation of the Graham Scholars Program. This is the first course in this program, open to top undergraduate students offered by Professor Steven Wright, Thurnau Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Sara Adlerstein-Gonzalez, Assistant Research Scientist in the School of Natural Resources and Environment. More details This project will focus on hydropower and associated economic, biodiversity, engineering and cultural issues. The course will draw upon knowledge gained in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. but the field site will be in Chile. Go to GESI for more details with links .
- SOC 495.003 “Health and Population in South Africa”
Discusses the historical roots of the health and population situation in South Africa, with comparisons to China and countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union. Seminar counts toward the Health and Aging sub-concentration.
- Women's Studies 483: "Special Topics - International Reproductive Health Policy" Explores the history of empirical health science research on same-sex sexuality, beginning at mid-century with the consolidation of substance abuse and mental health diagnoses in the DSM-III and moving through the depathologization debates of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first half of the course will provide a context through which to move into primary epidemiological literature of the last decades and the manipulation and misuse of this work by anti-gay organizations.
- Women's Studies 342: "Special Topics in Gender and Health - at Increased Risk: Same Sex Sexuality in Health Science Research" Explores the history of empirical health sciences research on same-sex sexuality, beginning at mid-century with the consolidation of substance abuse and mental health diagnoses in the DSM-III and moving through the depathologization debates of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first half of the course will provide a context through which to move into primary epidemiological literature of the last decades and the manipulation and misuse of this work by anti-gay organizations.
- Honors 135 - Ideas in Honors, Section 008, SEM, "The price of Poverty: Contemporary Issues in Global Health" The course will begin with a brief history of international health efforts and defining the "players" in global health such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the Gates Foundation, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), governments, and the local people. We will then take a closer look at the Millennium Development Goals and the social factors that shape them. Throughout the course we will cover many hot topics in global health such as AIDS prevention, corporate responsibility, and the intersection of religion and medicine. We will end with the discussion of where the responsibility lies when addressing poverty and associated health problems - the WHO, wealthy Westernized countries, local governmnets, or U of M students.
- French 270 Sec 003 REC, "French and Francophone Literature and Culture, Disease and Community" This course will study how various concepts of health and disease have been used throughout French literary, social and political history. Questions to be explored are: What is normal and what is deviant? What are the links between medical science and literature? How was medicine used to define race and sexuality? If disease can be used as exclusion, can it also be used in a positive way? What is the AIDS crisis telling us about French society? Prerequisite: FRENCH 235 with a grade of C- or higher
Language Learning
Foreign language study is an essential component of an education that meets the needs of students interested in pursuing careers in global health. It is increasingly expected that health professionals engaged in international work and students entering professional schools have working proficiency in one (if not two) foreign languages. The University of Michigan’s distinguished language departments and area studies centers ensures a wide array of foreign language offerings, as well as the social, cultural, and political context courses that complement them.
- Summer Language Institute
Beyond the instruction offered over the course of the academic year, the Summer Language Institute offers intensive programs in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Kurdish, Latin, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Teaching English as a Second Language lasting 7 to 10 weeks, depending on the language.
- Residential College Second Language Programs
Intensive language instruction offered during the school year in French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Latin.
- Less Commonly Taught Languages
A detailed listing of exceptional language offerings. Includes those offered by the Summer Language Institute.
- Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
- Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
- Department of Near Eastern Studies
- Department of Romance Languages
- Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures