The Minor Concentration in Social Studies of Medicine is an interdisciplinary concentration of courses designed to address the needs of 1) undergraduates preparing for one of the health professions and 2) social science and humanities undergraduates who wish to gain a broader interdisciplinary understanding of medicine and health issues.
The Minor Concentration in Social Studies of Medicine presents medicine as a complex network of institutions, cultures and political relations embedded in the institutions, cultures and political relations of the larger society. Courses are divided into three groups: History of Medicine, Anthropology of Medicine, and Sociology of Medicine.
The Minor consists of 18 credits. Students are required to take at least one course in each of the three groups. NOTE: No overlap is permitted with courses counting towards the student's Major Concentration.
Please see current calendar for prerequisites and courses offered or consult Minerva Course Catalog.
Search the Class Schedule by term for course sections offered. This includes class times, locations and instructors.
Please note: not all courses are offered each year.
The department of Social Studies of Medicine is in the process of revising its minor program. In the meantime we will accept the following courses in addition to the approved course list:
ANTH 385 (can count towards your one course minimum in each group)
HSEL 309 (can count towards your 18 credits requirements, but you still need at least one course in each group (HIST, ANTH, SOCIOLOGY)
Program Requirement:
The Minor Concentration in Social Studies of Medicine presents as a complex network of institutions, cultures, and political relations embedded in the institutions, cultures and political relations of the larger society. Courses are divided into three groups: History of Medicine, Anthropology of Medicine, and Sociology of Medicine. The Minor consists of 18 credits. Students are required to take at least one course in each of the three groups.
Note: No overlap is permitted with courses counting towards the student’s major concentration.
Complementary Courses (18 credits)
18 credits from the following (at least 3 credits from each of the three groups):
History of Medicine
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HIST 249 Health&the Healer in West Hist 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: The natural history of health and disease and the development of the healing arts, from antiquity to the beginning of modern times. The rise of "western" medicine. Health and healing as gradually evolving aspects of society and culture.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Note: Also available to first-year medical students in their options program.
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 319 The Scientific Revolution 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: The intellectual and cultural history of science and technology, in Europe and in the wider world, from the time of Leonardo to the time of Newton (c. 1500-c.1700).
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Prerequisite(s): HIST 212, HIST 214, HIST 215, HIST 216, HIST 226, HIST 238, HIST 249 or HIST 250 recommended.
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 335 Science and Medicine in Canada 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: The social and intellectual history of science and medicine in Canada, from early exploration, through the rise of learned societies, universities and professional organizations, to World War II.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 356 Medicine in the Medieval West 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: The history of ideas about the human body, disease and therapeutics and the diverse practices of medicine in western Europe in the Middle Ages (ca. AD 300-1500), with particular attention to their social, intellectual, cultural and religious context.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 381 Colonial Africa 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: An overview of the history of foreign intervention and anticolonial resistance in 19th and 20th century Africa. Topics include: theories of colonialism, the scramble for Africa, colonialism and disease, indirect rule, labour, nationalism and resistance, and changing gender roles.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 424 Gender, Sexuality & Medicine 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: Gender, sexuality, and medicine since the colonial era, with a focus on North American experience. Topics will include reproductive medicine (puberty, childbirth, fertility control, menopause), changing perceptions of men's and women's health needs and risks, and ideas about sexual behaviour and identity.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Prerequisite: A 300-level History course in gender, sexuality or medicine or permission of instructor.
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 430 Topics in Modern Medicine 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: Selected topics in the history of medicine in the 19th, 20th and/or 21st centuries will be explored through discussion of primary and secondary historical sources.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 449 Medicine in the Ancient World 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: The evolution of ideas about the human body, disease, and therapeutics, and the diverse practices of medicine in Graeco-Roman antiquity (ca 800BC - ca 600CE), with particular attention given to their social, political, cultural and religious context.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Prerequisite: HIST 349 or an introductory course in Ancient Greek or Roman history
- Restriction: Not open to students who have taken HIST 452 and HIST 453
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 452 Topics in Pre-Modern Medicine 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: The history of the evolution of ideas about the human body, disease and therapeutics and the diverse practices of medicine prior to the advent of modern clinical and laboratory medicine in the 19th c., with particular attention to social, political, cultural and religious context.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Prerequisites: HIST 214 or HIST 249 and a 300-level course in History or permission of instructor.
- Priority is given to students registered in the Minor Concentration in Social Studies of Medicine
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 457 Topics in Medical History 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: This course explores different topics in medical history. Topics to be explored include the role of medicine from ancient to modern times.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 558 Modern Medicine: Seminar 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: The emergence of scientific medicine, medical professionalization, the development of public health and the process of medical specialization since 1700.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 559 Modern Medicine: Research 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: Supervised design, research, writing, and discussion of a major research paper on a theme in the history of modern medicine since 1700.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 567D1 Seminar: Medieval Medicine 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: Models of the body, disease and medical intervention current in western Europe between 400 and 1500 AD will be examined through analysis of primary sources in translation, and modern historical scholarship.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Students must register for both HIST 567D1 and HIST 567D2
- No credit will be given for this course unless both HIST 567D1 and HIST 567D2 are successfully completed in consecutive terms
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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HIST 567D2 Seminar: Medieval Medicine 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:History: Models of the body, disease and medical intervention current in western Europe between 400 and 1500 AD will be examined through analysis of primary sources in translation, and modern historical scholarship. The sequel to this course is HIST 496.
Offered by: History and Classical Studies
- Prerequisite: HIST 567D1
- No credit will be given for this course unless both HIST 567D1 and HIST 567D2 are successfully completed in consecutive terms
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
Anthropology of Medicine
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ANTH 227 Medical Anthropology 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Anthropology: Beliefs and practices concerning sickness and healing are examined in a variety of Western and non-Western settings. Special attention is given to cultural constructions of the body and to theories of disease causation and healing efficacy. Topics include international health, medical pluralism, transcultural psychiatry, and demography.
Offered by: Anthropology
- Fall
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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ANTH 302 New Horizons in Medical Anth. 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Anthropology: Using recent ethnographies as textual material, this course will cover theoretical and methodological developments in medical anthropology since the early 1990's. Topics include a reconsideration of the relationship between culture and biology, medical pluralism revisited, globalization and health and disease, and social implications of new biomedical technologies.
Offered by: Anthropology
- Winter
- Prerequisite: ANTH 227
- Restriction: Anthropology program students.
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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ANTH 314 Psychological Anthropology 01 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Anthropology: A survey of current theories and methods employed in psychological anthropology. Some areas considered are: cross-cultural studies of socialization and personality development; cultural factors in mental illness; individual adaptations to rapid socio-cultural change.
Offered by: Anthropology
- Fall
- Prerequisite: Any Anthropology course
- Restriction: Not open to students who have taken ANTH 214
- Terms
- Fall 2024
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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ANTH 325 Anthropology of the Self 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Anthropology: A review of the anthropological problematization of the self. The course examines ethnographically how illness, mental illness, pharmaceuticals, psychoanalysis, possession, death, violence and colonization disrupt our commonsense notions of the self and its relation to the other.
Offered by: Anthropology
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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ANTH 407 Anthropology of the Body 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Anthropology: This course will survey theoretical approaches used over the past 100 years, and then focus on contemporary debates using case studies. The nature/culture mind/ body, subject/object, self/other dichotomies central to most work of the body will be problematized.
Offered by: Anthropology
- Winter
- Prerequisites: ANTH 227 and (1) 300-level anthropology course, and Honours/Major/Minor status in Anthropology or Social Studies of Medicine, or permission of instructor.
- Restriction: U3 status or permission of instructor
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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ANTH 408 Sensory Ethnography 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Anthropology: Anthropology of the senses through the study of ethnographic film, photography and sound. Topics include: the role of senses and emotion in the production of knowledge, non-word based ways of knowing, and the relation between image and text in anthropology.
Offered by: Anthropology
- Prerequisite: U3 students in Anthropology or permission of instructor
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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ANTH 423 Mind, Brain & Psychopathology 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Anthropology: Evolutionary origins of the human mind and the 'social brain', and the psychopathologies that are said to provide access to this evolutionary history, through the perspective of the anthropology of science and psychiatry.
Offered by: Anthropology
- Fall
- Prerequisites: ANTH 227 and Honours/Major/Minor status in Anthropology or Minor Concentration in Social Studies of Medicine or permission of instructor
- Restrictions: U3 students. Not open to students who have taken ANTH 443 under this topic.
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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ANTH 438 Topics in Medical Anthropology 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Anthropology: Conceptions of health and illness and the form and meaning that illness take are reflections of a particular social and cultural context. Examination of the metaphoric use of the body, comparative approaches to healing, and the relationship of healing systems to the political and economic order and to development.
Offered by: Anthropology
- Fall
- Prerequisite(s): ANTH 227 and Honours/Major/Minor status in Anthropology or Minor Concentration in Social Studies of Medicine or permission of instructor.
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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ANTH 480 Special Topic 5 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Anthropology: Supervised reading in advanced special topics under direction of a member of staff.
Offered by: Anthropology
- Prerequisite: Completion of all available courses relevant to the topic and consent of the instructor
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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ANTH 481 Special Topic 6 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Anthropology: Supervised reading in advanced special topics under direction of a member of staff.
Offered by: Anthropology
- Prerequisite: Completion of all available courses relevant to the topic and consent of the instructor
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
Sociology of Medicine
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SOCI 225 Medicine&Health in Mod Society 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Sociology (Arts): Socio-medical problems and ways in which sociological analysis and research are being used to understand and deal with them. Canadian and Québec problems include: poverty and health; mental illness; aging; death and dying; professionalism; health service organization.
Offered by: Sociology
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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SOCI 309 Health and Illness 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Sociology (Arts): Health and illness as social rather than purely bio-medical phenomena. Topics include: studies of ill persons, health care occupations and organizations; poverty and health; inequalities in access to and use of health services; recent policies, ideologies, and problems in reform of health services organization.
Offered by: Sociology
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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SOCI 310 Sociology of Mental Health 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Sociology (Arts): Three broad areas of sociological research on mental health and illness: definitions and measurement; social origins; and societal responses. Mental health and illness as a product of social circumstances.
Offered by: Sociology
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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SOCI 365 Health and Development 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Sociology (Arts): Main concepts and controversies linking health to broader social and economic conditions in low income countries. Topics include the demographic and epidemiological transitions, the health and wealth conundrum, the social determinants of health, health as an economic development strategy, and the impact of the AIDS pandemic.
Offered by: Sociology
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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SOCI 390 Gender and Health 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Sociology (Arts): Key conceptual and substantive issues in gender and health since c1950: stratified medicalization of women's and men's health; social movements in health including the women's health movement; gender inequality in morbidity and mortality; gender, power and control in patient/physician interactions; embodied experience; politics and policies of gender and health.
Offered by: Sociology
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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SOCI 508 Med Socio & Social Psychiatry 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Sociology (Arts): The social construction of mental illness and disease, the personal and professional definition and recognition of illness, the distribution and determinants of illness, disease, sickness in the population, and the politics of medical research.
Offered by: Sociology
- Prerequisite: SOCI 309 or SOCI 310 or Permission of the Instructor.
- Note: Open to Social Studies of Medicine students.
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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SOCI 515 Medicine and Society 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Sociology (Arts): The sociology of health and illness. Reading in areas of interest, such as: the sociology of illness, health services occupations, organizational settings of health care, the politics of change in national health service systems, and contemporary ethical issues in medical care and research.
Offered by: Sociology
- Prerequisite: Undergraduate students require permission of instructor
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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SOCI 525 HlthCare Systems in Comp Persp 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Sociology (Arts): Comparative perspective to illustrate processes involved in the development and evolution of health care systems around the world. Countries examined will represent different welfare state regimes, health care system typologies, levels of development and wealth.
Offered by: Sociology
- Prerequisite: Permission of instructor.
- Restriction(s): Not open to students who have taken EPIB 525. Not open to students who are taking or have taken PPHS 525.
- Note: This course is cross-listed in Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health and in Sociology.
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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SOCI 538 Sel Top in Soc of Biomed Know 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Sociology (Arts): The seminar will examine recent work in the sociology of biomedical knowledge. It will focus on the technological shaping of biomedical knowledge, i.e., on the impact of new technologies and equipments on the development of biomedical knowledge.
Offered by: Sociology
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year
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SOCI 588 Biosociology/Biodemography 3 Credits
- Fall
- Winter
- Summer
Offered in the:Sociology (Arts): This course will explore linkages between social and biological systems, their influence on health and well-being over the life course, and on health disparities. Topics include classical sociological approaches to biosocial processes, sociobiology (reductionist, but population-based), and newer demographic studies on gen-environment, epigenetic, and stress-metabolic/allostatic processes.
Offered by: Sociology
- Terms
- This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year
- Instructors
- There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year