HSOC

For courses from other schools, transfer students and majors taking a course for the major elsewhere. 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

During the last 500 years, science has emerged as a central and transformative force that continues to reshape everyday life in countless ways. This introductory course will survey the emergence of the scientific world view from the Renaissance through the end of the 20th century. By focusing on the life, work, and cultural contexts of those who created modern science, we will explore their core ideas and techniques, where they came from, what problems they solved, what made them controversial and exciting and how they relate to contemporary religious beliefs, politics, art, literature, and music. The course is organized chronologically and thematically. In short, this is a "Western Civ" course with a difference, open to students at all levels.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

The concept of “sex” has meant multiple things to science and medicine over the last few hundred years: a way of sorting bodies, a behavior to observe, a driving force behind reproduction and evolution, and a yardstick by which to measure normality. It has been both a binary of male and female, and a spectrum; both separate from gender, and inseparably entwined with it. It has been defined at different moments by anatomy, hormones, chromosomes, and even metabolism. In this course, we will explore how scientists have studied—and perhaps produced— the many-faceted thing called sex, and how historians have come to understand that past. This first-year seminar introduces students to primary source research; historical writing; and methods from both Science and Technology Studies (STS), and queer, trans, and feminist studies. Course materials will focus mainly on the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course explores the nature of disease and the history of medical practice and healing in the medieval period, using methods from intellectual, cultural, and social history, as well as the life sciences, and incorporating material from Indonesia to England. The themes of this course include: 1) the diversity of healing practices and beliefs in this period; 2) specific rationalities of different methods of healing; 3) views of the human body and disease; 4) the wide array of practitioners that people turned to for medical care, including physicians, midwives, family members, herbalists, snake handlers, saints, and surgeons; 5) institutions of medicine, such as the hospital. Students will have their minds blown as they learn to question everything they thought they knew about how science and medicine work.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

recover We will investigate the evolution of scientific theories and popular beliefs regarding the causes of addiction in the 20th and 21st centuries, and how they have shaped treatment approaches to these disorders. We will examine the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and the current opioid epidemic, and consider sociocultural and political factors that contributed to the onset of and reaction to these crises. Finally, we will discuss research into the neurobiological, psychological, familial, social, and political factors that initiate and sustain addiction, and the efficacy of various treatment approaches.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Disability is a near universal experience, and yet it remains on the margins of most discussions concerning identity, politics, and popular culture. Using the latest works in historical scholarship, this seminar focuses on how disability has been experienced and defined in the past. We will explore various disabilities including those acquired at birth and those sustained by war, those visible to others and those that are invisible. For our purposes, disability will be treated as a cultural and historical phenomenon that has shaped American constructions of race, class, and gender, attitudes toward reproduction and immigration, ideals of technological progress, and notions of the natural and the normal.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

The CDC estimates that 1 in 150 children have autism. Three decades ago, this number was 1 in 5,000. The communities in which these children are identified in ever increasing numbers are ill prepared to meet their needs. Scientists have struggled to understand the causes of this disorder, its treatment, and why it appears to be rapidly increasing. Families, policy makers, schools and the healthcare system have argued bitterly in the press and in the courts about the best way to cre for these children and the best ways to pay for this care. In this class, we will use autism as a case study to understnad how psychiatric and developmental disorders of childhood come to be defined over time, their biologocal and environmental causes identified, and treatments developed. We will also discuss the identification and care of these children in the broader context of the American education and healthcare systems. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Global health is an increasingly popular goal for many modern leaders. Yet critics see evidence of a new imperialism in various aid programs. We will examine the evolution over time and place of programs designed to improve the health of underserved populations. Traditionally catergorized as public health programs or efforts to achieve a just society, these programs often produce results that are inconsistent with these goals. We will examine the benefits and risks of past programs and conceptualize future partnerships on both a local and global stage. Students should expect to question broadly held beliefs about the common good and service. Ultimately we will examine the concept of partnership and the notion of community health, in which ownership, control, and goals are shared between outside expert and inside community member. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 1989

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

History of Medicine and Healing Bacteria, Bodies, and Empires: A Global History of Medicine and Healing is a seminar on the history of medicine from the early modern period to the present. It addresses major issues and questions about bodies, diseases, epidemics, and medical institutions in the context of major historical developments in world history, with a focus on the Global South. The course examines how medicine, knowledge, and practices about diseases and bodies influenced political and social conditions, as well as how sociopolitical changes shaped and transformed people's perceptions of health, life, and the environment. Scholars have frequently examined the history of medicine as a Western practice and with a focus on Western medical traditions. And, medical and healing practices in the history of the Global South are frequently examined through the lens of religion, culture, and race, or, more recently, in relation to modernization and colonization. By situating the history of medical knowledge and practices in world history with an emphasis on Global South, this course introduces readings and research methods to challenge these fixed paradigms and shed light on questions and research agendas that will unearth the encounters, connections, and mobility of bacteria, bodies, and medical methods among various communities across time from Black Death to contemporary pandemics. Also Offered As: HIST 0032 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

The twenty-first century has seen a proliferation of new pandemic threats, including SARS, MERS, Ebola, Zika, and most recently the novel coronavirus called COVID-19. Our responses to these diseases are conditioned by historical experience. From the Black Death to cholera to AIDS, epidemics have wrought profound demographic, social, political, and cultural change all over the world. Through a detailed analysis of selected historical outbreaks, this seminar examines the ways in which different societies in different eras have responded in times of crisis. The class also analyzes present-day pandemic preparedness policy and responses to health threats ranging from influenza to bioterrorism.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

or HSOC 1411 American Health Policy 4.00 or HSOC 1401 The Peoples Health

Subject

HSOC

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

or HSOC 0490 Comparative Medicine

Subject

HSOC

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course explores the medical consequences of the interaction between Europe and the "non- West." It focuses on three parts of the world Europeans colonized: Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. Today's healing practices in these regions grew out of the interaction between the medical traditions of the colonized and those of the European colonizers. We therefore explore the nature of the interactions. What was the history of therapeutic practices that originated in Africa or South Asia? How did European medical practices change in the colonies? What were the effects of colonial racial and gender hierarchies on medical practice? How did practitioners of "non-Western" medicine carve out places for themselves? How did they redefine ancient traditions? How did patients find their way among multiple therapeutic traditions? How does biomedicine take a different shape when it is practiced under conditions of poverty, or of inequalities in power? How do today's medical problems grow out of this history? This is a fascinating history of race and gender, of pathogens and conquerors, of science and the body. It tells about the historical and regional roots of today's problems in international medicine.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This class examines the relationship between technology and the societies in which different technologies emerge and are adopted (and adapted), with a focus on information and communication technologies from the invention of writing to LLMs. Topics include different definitions of information, different types of information storage and retrieval technologies (books, clocks), institutions associated with information and communication technology (archives, libraries), and the invention of computing and machine learning.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This first-year seminar examines the historical relationship between the categories of human and machine in the 20th century. We will look carefully at the history of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the history of the psychological sciences to unpack how work in AI has been built on particular understandings of the mind and the body and how, in turn, it has changed and shaped what it means to be human. This is a heavily discussion based seminar where students will engage with a variety of sources, including scientific writings, novels, films, and scholarship in the history of science, technology and medicine. Students will leave the class with a better understanding of the historical legacies in conversations around AI today and the potential ramifications that might have for who we are, who we’ve been and who we want to be as we reimagine the future of AI. Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: STSC 0644 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This seminar is designed for first-year students who are interested in some big questions related to the topic of "sport science." Sport science may seem to be just a niche field where teams of physiologists, psychologists, geneticists, engineers and others work to make already very athletic people go "faster, higher, stronger." On the other hand, the work of sport scientists intersects everyday with far-reaching questions about how categories of sex, age, race, disability, and nationality are defined, measured, challenged, or maintained. Sport scientists weigh in on debates over what kinds of physical activity or bodies are "clean," what kinds of performance are "natural" or even human, and what kinds of sporting spaces or equipment are fair. In this class we'll read and discuss historical and contemporary accounts of sport science in the world. My hope is that students will enter the class interested in sports and leave interested in sports and in gendered science, objectivity and standardization, the politics of big data and more.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

What is climate? This course examines this question by exploring the diverse perspectives of various peoples at different times and in diverse locations. We will then investigate how the myriad of conceptualizations of climate influenced a wide array of topics, including health, race, historical change, human destiny, and responses to environmental challenges. We will investigate the changing ideas surrounding climate by examining historical texts, scientific literature, and cultural artifacts. By the end of the course, students will have developed a nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between climate and human society. Students will also be able to reflect on how the historical and cultural contexts that inform interpretations of climate impact contemporary discussion surrounding climate change and solutions for addressing climate-related challenges. Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: STSC 0883 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

In this survey we explore the relationships between technical knowledge and warin the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We attend particularly to the centrality of bodily injury in the history of war. Topics include changing interpretations of the machine gun as inhumane or acceptable; the cult of the battleship; banned weaponry; submarines and masculinity; industrialized war and total war; trench warfare and mental breakdown; the atomic bomb and Cold War; chemical warfare in Viet Nam; and "television war" in the 1990s. Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: STSC 1120 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course will give the student an introduction to the sociological study of medicine. Medical sociology is a broad field, covering topics as diverse as the institution and profession of medicine, the practice of medical care, and the social factors that contribute to sickness and well-being. Although we will not explore everything, we will attempt to cover as much of the field as possible through four thematic units: (1) the organization and development of the profession of medicine, (2) the delivery of health- care, especially doctor-patient interaction, (3) the social and cultural factors that affect how illness is defined, and (4) the social causes of illness. The class will emphasize empirical research especially but not only quantitative research. Also Offered As: SOCI 1110 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course is designed to give a general overview of how sociologists study mental illness. We will be concerned with describing the contributions of sociological research and exploring how these contributions differ from those of psychology, psychiatry, and social work. This overview will be done in three parts: we will discuss (i) what "mental illness" is, (ii) precisely how many Americans are mentally ill, (iii) how social factors (e.g. race, gender, class) and social arrangements (e.g. social networks) lead to mental illness, and (iv) how we as a society respond to and treat the mentally ill. Throughout the course, we will be concerned with uncovering the assumptions behind different definitions of mental health and exploring their political, social, and legal implications.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

The study of bioethics is both intensely timely (barely a week passes that some relevant, high-profile story is not in the news), and richly interdisciplinary (combining theories and methods from history, sociology, philosophy, law, religious studies, the life sciences, economics and political theory, at the very least). This course will take an in-depth approach to the bioethical framework of principlism. We will learn about the four principles: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. Much of the semester will be spent unpacking prominent case studies in which these principles collide, including surrogacy, enhancement, drug legalization, and AI in healthcare. How can bioethics inform decision making in these contested spaces? Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: SOCI 2971 1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 1991

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Eastern Mediterranean (15th-21st c.) Bacteria, Bodies, and Empires is a survey course about the history of medicine in the Eastern Mediterranean from early modern period to the present. It addresses the major issues and questions concerning bodies, diseases, and medical institutions within the context of major historical developments in the world and region’s history. The course looks at how medicine, knowledge, and practices about diseases and bodies changed political and social conditions, as well as how socio-political changes defined and transformed people's perceptions of health, life, and the environment. Scholars have frequently examined the history of medicine in Eastern Mediterranean societies, either in relation to Islamic culture in the early modern period or, more recently, in relation to Westernization and modernization. By situating the history of medical knowledge and practices in the Eastern Mediterranean within global history, this course seeks to challenge these fixed paradigms and shed light on questions and research agendas that will unearth the encounters, connections, and mobility of bacteria, bodies, and medical methods among various communities. Also Offered As: HIST 1365 Mutually Exclusive: HIST 2365 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

or HSOC 1222 Medical Sociology HSOC or STSC Electives Select 3 HSOC or STSC Electives (Any courses with HSOC or 3 STSC or Attribute AHSM) Bioethics & Society Concentration 4 Select 1 Core Discipline course (attribute AHSB) 1 Select 1 Core Course (Attribute AHSI) 1 Select 1 Philosophical & Religious Foundations course 1 33.00 (Attribute AHSP) Select 1 Social & Institutional Contexts course (Attribute 1

Subject

HSOC

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

While the scary threats of the moment in recent years, Ebola, MERS, swine flu, bioterrorism dominate media coverage of public health, most human suffering anddeath are driven by more mundane causes. This course critically addresses twenty-first-century public health science and policy by examining the long history (beginning with the plague epidemics of Renaissance Italy) that brought us to where we are today. Topics include responses to epidemics; socioeconomic, racial, and other disparities in health; occupational health; the rise of public health as a field of scientific inquiry; sanitary reform; the Bacteriological Revolution; the shift from disease causes to risk factors; and the social determinants of health.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

"American Health Policy" places the success or failure of specific pieces of U.S. health care legislation into social and political context. The cours covers the time period from the U.S. Civil War to the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), addressing two central questions: 1) Why was the United States one of the only industrialized nations to, until recently, have a private, non-nationalized, non-federalized health care system? 2) Why has U.S. health insurance historically been a benefit given through places of employment? Some topics addressed include: private health insurance, industrial health and workmen's compensation, the welfare state (in Europe, Canada, and the U.S.), maternal and infant care programs, Medicare and Medicaid. One of the main take-home messages of the course is that 20th-century U.S. health care policies both reflected and shaped American social relations based on race, class, gender, and age. This course is a combination lecture and "SAIL" class. SAIL stands for "Structured, Active, In-Class Learning." During many class periods, students will work in small groups on a specific exercise, followed by a large group discussion and/or brief lecture. Students who choose to take this course, therefore, must be fully committed to adequately preparing for class and to working collaboratively in class.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course examines contemporary environmental issues such as energy, waste, pollution, health, population, biodiversity and climate through a historical and critical lens. All of these issues have important material, natural and technical aspects; they are also inextricably entangled with human history and culture. To understand the nature of this entanglement, the course will introduce key concepts and theoretical frameworks from science and technology studies and the environmental humanities and social sciences.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

SOCI 2000 or HSOC 2202/ Health of Populations 4 SOCI 2220 4.00 Core Discipline

Subject

HSOC

Credits (min)

1

Credits (max)

1

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

In a time of abundant fake news and mis-information, it becomes ever e important for students (for all, really!) to learn how to critically assess (and produce) robust empirical evidence to uncover patterns and trends about social life. The goal of this course is to do just that through the use of census microdata, video and photographs, with a focus on social inequality! Or, in other words…a first goal of this course is to introduce students to empirical work that will let them identify robust evidence on social inequality across a diverse set of topics and countries. A second goal of the course is to provide students with key analytical skills through working with microdata to uncover social inequality globally. Having exposure and hands-on experience with the correct tools to read (and produce) evidence on patterns and trends on social research is an important skill for students in any major. We will use publicly available census microdata on more than 100 countries from IPUMS and photographs from the Dollar Street Project. Students will work with a country, produce their own analysis and combine it with photographs and videos. As a Signature Course, a third key goal of the course is to teach students skills that will enable them to more easily read empirical work and write results more clearly and concisely. Students will practice reading academic research, do class exercises, write case studies, and complete a research paper/video/photo essay that will aid them in these goals. Also Offered As: LALS 2012, SOCI 2020, STSC 2012 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course is designed to introduce students to the quantitative study of factors that influence the health of populations. Topics to be addressed include methods for characterizing levels of health in populations, comparative and historical perspectives on population health, health disparities, health policy issues and the effectiveness of interventions for enhancing the health of populations. These topics will be addressed both for developed and developing world populations. The course will focus on specific areas of health and some of the major issues and conclusions pertaining to those domains. Areas singled out for attention include chronic diseases and their major risk factors, such as smoking, physical activity, dietary factors and obesity. Throughout the course, the focus will be on determining the quality of evidence for health policy and understanding the manner in which it was generated.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Perspectives from the Past and Present This course will introduce students to the problems of sex, sexuality and sexual science in South Asia over the centuries. Its central problem will be how sex, society and knowledge about sex have been transformed in South Asia under the conditions of colonial and postcolonial modernity. It will consider how a multitude of indigenous practices and knowledges, from the famous Kamasutra and its allied knowledges to the transgender communities, from the Lazzat-un-Nisa to concubinage and the sexual norms of elite households, were framed and reframed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through the agency of a variety of institutions, groups and individuals. The course will also show how South Asia played a crucial role in the global evolution of sexual knowledge. Topics will include the varieties and functions of traditional sexual knowledges, colonial sexology, changing sexual identities and practices, the relation of psychiatry and medicine to sex, queer and transgender sexualities, and the complex and shifting role of the state and civil society to all of these topics. Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: SAST 2211 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course considers the diverse range of theories and topics related to trauma in the 20th and 21st centuries, looking to understand how trauma has been mobilized at different moments in history for political, social, and personal ends. The point of the course is not to simply support or deny trauma as an interpretive framework for human pain and suffering, but instead to look critically at how it emerged as an object of study for medical and scientific circles and the benefits and ramifications of those biomedical frameworks that were felt at the time and stay with us into the present. We also consider how trauma has been taken up by actors outside of medicine and science, including popular media, fiction and activist communities. Using frameworks from feminist science studies, disability studies, black studies and queer studies, alongside more traditional histories of psychiatry, medicine and technology, students think about such diverse topics as sexual violence, racial violence, domestic and familial abuse, theories of psychological development, memory and trust, citizenship, the criminal justice system, the effects of our environments, intergenerational effects of violence, embodiment, biomedical models of risk and disease and narratives of the self. At the heart of this course is an interest in how we should understand humans’ capacity to harm and be harmed by one another, and how we can attend to the enduring effects of inequality and structural violence while remaining firmly grounded in the day-to-day lived, felt realities of violence and interpersonal harm.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

War and its effects on the human body are brutal; the carnage of the battlefield and the conditions of camp life have presented special challenges to medicine throughout history. Additionally, the incorporation of new technologies into the military sphere, whether or not they started as civilian technologies, fundamentally changed the ways in which war was conceptualized, fought, and won. But the significance of medicine and technology in a military context extends well beyond the injuries and illnesses of war. Looking more closely at the ways in which physicians, military officers, soldiers, and civilians have interacted with each other both in war and in peace reveals much about the political, cultural, and disciplinary formation of medicine in the modern era and the roles technology in such formations. Understanding historical uses of medicine and technologies sheds light upon notions of localized and globalized warfare, as well as the political machinations in which nations engaged to create ideologies of dominance, threat, and safety. This seminar surveys the history of medicine and technology, principally in an American context, from the seventeenth through the late twentieth centuries. We will look at the ways in which the practices, theories, and tools of military medicine have played, and continue to play, a prominent role in conceptualizations of warfare, health, disease, politics, disability, morality, society, the body, culture, and ethics. We will take an in-depth look at the ways in which militaries and medical institutions have shaped, and been shaped by, other social and political categories like gender, race, class, and ethics over the last four hundred years and across various (though mostly Western) societies, and the ramifications for both soldiers and civilians alike. Students will be graded on two short essay assignments, an exam, in-class participation, and a final paper (no longer than ten pages in length) based on material covered in the course."

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Studies show that about a quarter of college students take psychotropic medications, such as anti-depressants and stimulants. This figure has been attacked from both sides – by those who describe American adolescents and young adults today as over-medicated, and by those who point to accessibility gaps to suggest that too many are actually undertreated. Interrogating this question requires a deep dive into the history of one of our most contested disciplines. We’ll briefly consider the ancient roots of mental illness to show that concerns about sanity and aberrant behavior have always been with us, but most of the syllabus will focus on the shifting landscape in the United States, as biological theories ceded to psychoanalysis and back again. Specific topics will include somatic therapies (like lobotomy and electroconvulsive therapy), pharmaceutical interventions, and institutionalization/ deinstitutionalization. We’ll close by examining the current state of the field as represented by the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Malaria, Dengue, Chagas disease, the Plague- some of the most deadly and widespread infectious diseases are carried by insects. The insects are also pernicious pests; bed bugs have returned from obscurity to wreak havoc on communities, invasive species decimate agricultural production, and wood borers are threatening forests across the United States. At the same time declines among the insects on which we depend- the honeybees and other pollinators--threaten our food security and ultimately the political stability of the US and other nations. We will study the areas where the insects and humans cross paths, and explore how our interactions with insects can be cause, consequence or symptom of much broader issues. This is not an entomology course but will cover a lot about bugs. It's not a traditional epidemiology course but will cover some fascinating epidemiological theory originally developed for the control of disease vectors. It will cover past epidemics and infestations that have changed the course of the history of cities and reversed advancing armies. HSOC 241. Stem Cells, Science and Society. Gearhart/Zaret.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This Fox Leadership and academically based community service seminar will use course readings and students' own observations and interviews in their service learning projects in West Philadelphia schools to analyze the causes and impact of school health and educational inequalities and efforts to address them. Course readings will include works by Jonathan Kozol, studies of health inequalities and their causes, and studies of No Child Left Behind, the CDC's School Health Index, recess, school meal, and nutrition education programs. Course speakers will help us examine the history, theories, politics and leadership behind different strategies for addressing school-based inequalities and their outcomes. Service options will focus especially on the West Philadelphia Recess Initiative. Other service options will include work with Community School Student Partnerships and the Urban Nutrition Initiative. Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: PSCI 2203 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

There may be no more unstable diagnosis in the history of medicine than autism. Originally considered rare, it has now been characterized as "epidemic"; initially considered a psychiatric disorder, it was subsequently classified as a developmental disability, and today is considered by many advocates to be an identity; at first attached to children who were quite disabled, it now describes extraordinarily accomplished academics, physicians, and lawyers as well. There may also be no more ubiquitous diagnosis in our current moment. As prevalence rates have soared to one out of every 36 children affected, it seems as if everyone is touched by autism in some capacity -- although a personal connection to autism is not at all required for this course. This class will cover the history of autism, from its introduction in 1943 to the present -- a trajectory that intersects with the histories of medicine, psychiatry, and disability. We will also explore the divisive issues fracturing the autism community right now, including the rise of Neurodiversity, inclusion, impairment, caregiving, representation, and even the very words we use to discuss those on the spectrum.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Eastern Mediterranean (15th-21st c.) Bacteria, Bodies, and Empires is a course about the history of medicine in the Eastern Mediterranean from the early modern period to the present. It addresses the major issues and questions concerning bodies, diseases, and medical institutions within the context of major historical developments in the world and region’s history. The course looks at how medicine, knowledge, and practices about diseases and bodies changed political and social conditions, as well as how socio-political changes defined and transformed people's perceptions of health, life, and the environment. Scholars have frequently examined the history of medicine in Eastern Mediterranean societies, either in relation to Islamic culture in the early modern period or, more recently, in relation to Westernization and modernization. By situating the history of medical knowledge and practices in the Eastern Mediterranean within global history, this course seeks to challenge these fixed paradigms and shed light on questions and research agendas that will unearth the encounters, connections, and mobility of bacteria, bodies, and medical methods among various communities. Also Offered As: HIST 2365 Mutually Exclusive: HIST 1365 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

In some parts of the world spending on pharmaceuticals is astronomical. In others, people struggle for survival amid new and reemerging epidemics and have little or no access to basic or life-saving therapies. Treatments for infectious diseases that disproportionately affect the world's poor remain under-researched and global health disparities are increasing. This interdisciplinary seminar integrates perspectives from the social sciences and the biomedical sciences to explore 1) the development and global flows of medical technologies; 2) how the health of individuals and groups is affected by medical technologies, public policy, and the forces of globalization as each of these impacts local worlds. The seminar is structured to allow us to examine specific case material from around the world (Haiti, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, China, India, for example), and to address the ways in which social, political- economic, and technological factors -- which are increasingly global in nature -- influence basic biological mechanisms and disease outcomes and distribution. As we analyze each case and gain familiarity with ethnographic methods, we will ask how more effective interventions can be formulated. The course draws from historical and ethnographic accounts, medical journals, ethical analyses, and films, and familiarizes students with critical debates on globalization and with local responses to globalizing processes.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Over the last century, we have witnessed dramatic historical change in population health, e.g. rising numbeers of obese Americans and dramatic declines in death from stomach cancer. There has also been highly visible social patterning of health and disease, such as socio-economic disparities in AIDS, substance abuse, and asthma in the U.S. to day or the association of breat cancer with affluence around the world. This course will explore the way researchers and others in past and present have tried to make sense of these patterns and do something about them. The course is historical and sociological. We will examine evidence and theories about how poverty, affluence and other social factors influence health AND we will examine how social and historical forces shape the ways in which health and disease are understood. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Modern engineering, technology, science, and medicine converge with each other in countless places, landscapes, institutions, and households. The profession of the engineer has been distinct from that of the scientist, and the “doctor,” since its inception in the 1880s, however. In our class we trace overlaps and boundaries among engineers and other key experts of modern society, government, and public health, covering spaces in the Americas, Asia, and Europe. We explore rivalries, the roles of management and the state, class status and prestige, and we listen to engineers themselves and their understandings of their roles, functions, and purpose in modern societies. We cover fields such as civil engineering, mining, chemical-industrial engineering (including pharmaceutics and oil refinery), mechanical engineering and machine design/maintenance, computer science, and the engineering of information technologies. No pre-requisites, no prior knowledge required. Also Offered As: STSC 2418 1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 1995

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course is an introduction to the historical development of medical ethics and to the birth of bioethics in the twentieth-century United States. We will examine how and why medical ethical issues arose in American society at this time. Themes will include human experimentation, organ donation, the rise of medical technology and euthanasia. Finally, this course will examine the contention that the current discipline of bioethics is a purely American phenomenon that has been exported to Great Britain, Canada and Continental Europe.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

What is the relationship between health and social movements for race, gender, or political justice? How do political, economic, and social struggles intersect with, impede, or give rise to new demands for health, changing medical practice, or intensified or ameliorated experiences of disease? Recently, such questions have animated news headlines and popular media as responses to COVID have occurred simultaneously with popular protest, social mobilizations, and heated debates regarding race, police violence, and social policy. Moreover, convergences of popular protest, health crises, and health action can be observed in historical accounts and in widely disparate geographical examples. This course asks what such instances have to offer our understandings of health politics today. It explores this through two questions: how have questions of health and medicine been taken up or influenced by political and social movements in diverse historical and geographical spaces? And, how have scholars thought about the relationship between social and political mobilizations and health access and practice? Drawing from examples from around the globe, the course will ask students to master conceptual tools and core questions used to analyze the relationship between health, political mobilizations, and social movements. Course materials will include scholarly readings, news media accounts, films, and popular and fictional writing.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Many factors have shaped, and continue to shape, population health and public health policy. This course covers the foundational knowledge of the science of public health and factors related to human health and wellness. Students will explore contemporary issues in the profession including the ongoing social and cultural reckoning with race and racism.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Medicine as it exists in contemporary America is profoundly technological; we regard it as perfectly normal to be examined with instruments, to expose our bodies to many different machines; and to have knowledge produced by those machines mechanically/electronically processed, interpreted and stored. We are billed technolgoically, prompted to attend appointments technologically, and often buy technologies to protect, diagnose, or improve our health: consider, for example, HEPA-filtering vacum cleaners; air-purifiers; fat-reducing grills; bathroom scales; blood pressure cuffs; pregancy testing kits; blood- sugar monitoring tests; and thermometers. Yet even at the beginning to the twentieth century, medical technolgies were scarce and infrequently used by physicians and medical consumers alike. Over the course of this semester, we will examine how technology came to medicine's center- stage, and what impact this change has had on medical practice, medical institutions and medical consumers - on all of us!

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Women's health is a constant refrain of modern life, prompting impassioned debates that speak to the fundamental nature of our society. Women's bodies are the tableaux across which politicians, physicians, healthcare professional, activists, and women themselves dispute issues as wide-ranging as individual versus collective rights, the legitimacy of scientific and medical knowledge, the role of the government in healthcare, inequalities of care, and the value of experiential knowledge, among many others. Understanding the history of these questions is crucial for informed engagement with contemporary issues. Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: GSWS 2537 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Approved independent study under faculty supervision. 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

From environmental crises to medical advancements and global food shortages, biology and the life sciences are implicated in some of our most pressing social issues. By looking at these issues, this course scrutinizes how developments in biology have shaped, and are shaped by, society. In the first unit, we’ll look at how institutions and technologi influence the modern life sciences, including the role of universities, public health departments, and museums in the development of biology. In the second unit, we’ll explore areas of biology that have raised controversies about regulation and access, including issues ranging from health to the environment. In the third unit, we’ll examine how scientists and the public invoke biological facts when addressing what it means to be human (or of a particular race, gender, ability, etc.). Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: STSC 3017 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

For most of us, what’s normal feels downright natural. The normal is our baseline, invisible and unconsidered until something abnormal draws our attention to it. But a little prodding shows the contradictions within bland, boring normality: it’s defined by our internal feelings as much as by quantified standards, it describes individuals as well as populations, and it is intensely difficult to describe on its own merits without comparison. So what does it mean to be normal, anyway? This seminar examines “the normal” as a medical and scientific concept from the Renaissance until today. Has the concept of normal always existed? What makes a person or body normal? How has such a thing been assessed? Can the normal exist without deviance – and is this relationship inherently one about power? We will examine how scientific ideas of “the normal” – and its conflation with “the natural” – shaped medical knowledge and ideologies about racial difference, sex and gender, socioeconomic class, anatomical difference and disability, and human behavior. How have the “normals” of the past shaped our current scientific understandings of ourselves and the people around us? Our goal will be to make visible the ways that “normal” gets normalized in order to deepen our critical engagement with modern medicine, wellness culture, and racial and gender politics. Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: STSC 3028 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

In recent decades, Indigenous Studies has emerged as a trans-national and interdisciplinary academic discipline that seeks to understand the historical experience, social reality, and political aspirations of Indigenous peoples. This course examines how theories and methods from Indigenous Studies offer new perspectives on core issues in the social study of science and technology and of health and society. Through films, podcasts, literature, and academic articles we will examine the historical role that science, technology, and medicine have played in the colonization of Indigenous people in the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. We will also examine how Indigenous groups have resisted scientific and technological projects and participated in their development in ways that foster self-governance and territorial sovereignty. Spring, even numbered years only Also Offered As: STSC 3097 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

es

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

In 1900, Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, the book that consolidated the creation of psychoanalysis. From that moment onwards, the history of this new discipline became inextricably tied to that of the new century. This course will explore this relationship from two angles: first, by tracing developments and shifts in psychoanalytic theory and practice from within and without the psychoanalytic movement; and second, by examining the impact of Freudian theory on what historians call the “Freudian century.” Psychoanalysis formed a body of knowledge whose impact in the twentieth century was virtually ubiquitous. This body of knowledge, comprising of a developmental theory of mind, a medical/therapeutic practice, and a method of investigation of the mind and society, served as a source to scientists, philosophers, artists, cultural theorists, medical practitioners, social activists and politicians, as well as marketing, propaganda, and PR professionals around the world. Most importantly, however, psychoanalysis has helped to craft a new understanding of subjectivity whose influence was most poignantly observed in how the twentieth-century subject came to understand and experience their own selfhood. If different actors across the twentieth century made use of psychoanalysis in various ways, the body of knowledge represented by psychoanalysis was by no means static. Its theories, practices, and methods underwent major shifts and re-elaborations, not only by psychoanalysts themselves but also by those same actors who utilized psychoanalysis for purposes going far beyond the narrow confines of the consulting room. The changes psychoanalysis has undergone, therefore, are reflective of the different functions and purposes it has served, the ways in which it has been applied, and the different contexts in which these changes have been formulated. The subjects of psychoanalysis – starting with Freud in his own “self-analysis” – were also, therefore, its creators. The analysis pursued in this course will lead us to a dual investigation. Firstly, we will examine the history of the twentieth century through the lens of Freudian theory, focusing on how it framed the experience of subjectivity in that period century. Secondly, we will explore some historical and epistemological questions pertaining at the core of the discipline: what type of discipline is psychoanalysis? Is there one psychoanalysis, or many? What function(s) did psychoanalysis serve in the twentieth century? And finally, does it still have a role to play in the twenty-first century? Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 1997

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

What do we mean by "science"? How did we come to agree on a common definition? Do we agree on a common definition? What about when we don't? This course explores histories of heterodox science and the construction of sciences and pseudosciences. In doing so, we will focus on expertise, authority, and legitimacy in science, as well as public consumption of science. This course will also introduce students to fundamental questions in the philosophy of science, as well as offering instruction in reading and methods of historiography. Topics include: phrenology, parapsychology, cryptozoology, UFOs, climate change denial. Also Offered As: STSC 3217 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course explores medicine and healing culture in Chinese history, including the introduction of Western/biomedicine to China. We start from the early 20th century, when we witnessed the major confrontation between Chinese medical traditions and the modernizing Chinese state. We then go back in time two thousand years ago and move chronologically to highlight plurality and changes. In the second half of the semester we come back to the 20th–21st centuries and investigate the practice and policies of public health in China and Chinese East Asia, including the recent history of SARS and COVID-19 in Taiwan.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

How we are born and give birth can vary more than most people realize. For most of history, women only acknowledged their pregnancy when they felt the baby move and they gave birth at home, often surrounded by other women. Now, the majority of Americans learn about pregnancy from an at-home kit you buy at the drugstore and their babies are born in hospitals, often the result of a complex set of processes involving surgical interventions, pharmaceuticals, and plenty of expert advice. How did this shift happen? How has it shaped one of the most foundational and intimate experiences of being human? This course will explore the history of conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and the post-partum period since the 19th century. We will examine the role of medicine, science, and technology, alongside changing ideas about gender, family, and motherhood to better understand this transformation in human reproduction. We will also critically examine the late-20th century emergence of the "natural motherhood" movement that arose as a response to the medicalization of these processes. Our class will examine this history from a critical trans-inclusive feminist perspective. We will also consider the impact of increasingly sophisticated medical technology on reproductive experiences and decisions, including birth control, abortion, conception, pregnancy, in vitro fertilization, surrogate mothers, and more. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course will explore how race has been defined through medical and scientific thought from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century. It examines race as it has emerged as a medical construct and a “valid” topic of scientific inquiry in Western biomedicine. Students will consider the various origins stories of race and will critically assess its utility and deployment in biomedical settings. In this seminar, students will consider the history behind the creation of racial typologies, views around racial mixing, racial assimilation, and racial essentialism, the birth and resurgence of eugenics, the emergence of race-based pharmaceuticals, and the refashioning of race in the era of genomics. Finally, we will examine the ways in which science and medicine and is allied fields have been complicit in reenforcing beliefs in embodied innate racial differences, as well as the harms that those beliefs engender. Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: STSC 3343 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course introduces students to a range of qualitative and historical research practices and modalities through individual and group investigation of a concept – “care” – that has been central to a wide range of disciplines and practices. Starting with feminist debates around the uses, meaning, and value of care, the course asks students what it means to investigate something that is both intangible and possesses multiple meanings. What does it meant to talk about “care work” or “health care”? How do we identify what people “care about”? How is care “operationalized” in different institutional, profit-making, or knowledge- producing settings? The course is structured around deep reading across historical and theoretical literature, and research activities including observation, mapping, archival research, interview techniques, and connecting a research question to relevant literatures. The focus will be on introducing students to aspects of the research process and building a research portfolio oriented around a shared theme.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course interrogates the historical connections between minds, bodies and machines in science and technology by taking a critical look at the history of Artificial Intelligence and cognitive science in the 20th century. We will consider how AI has shaped our understanding of what it means to be human, just as ideas of the "human" have shaped our hopes, fears and plans for AI over time. Students will be reading primary sources alongside historical and theoretical interventions from the history of science, science studies and affiiated fields to interrogate and better understand our current moment and reimagine the future of AI.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

How are health and wellbeing shaped by place? This course examines the relationship between place, environment, and health, with particular attention to mobility and migration and to the impact of changing climates. Scholars have used the term Anthropocene to characterize this era of fossil-fuel driven climatic changes. This course will ask how new understandings of the relationship between human well-being, particularly health and disease, and place and environment are shaping one other. Drawing from anthropology, history, and related fields, we will ask how humans have thought about health and place over time, about the relationship between health and cities in particular, and about mobility, movement, and displacement and their relationship to health. Students will be asked to conduct independent research and to produce a final project or paper on a case study of their choosing. Please note that the reading load in this course will be intensive.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

What are the subjects of trans studies? What does “trans” as a category afford us in looking at texts, people, systems, and objects? To what extent is trans an identity? What might it mean to think of it as a methodology? How might the tools of trans studies intervene in conversations and practices beyond the field itself? What are the stakes of such an expansive approach? This course introduces students to “trans” as a still-forming analytic that has emerged out of academic spaces, activist movements, and trans cultural production. We will engage with texts and questions that build on trans studies’ connections to (and divergences from) queer and feminist studies, history, critical race studies, disability studies, and science studies, among other fields, and we will also consider how trans knowledge can act beyond the theoretical. Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: GSWS 3500, STSC 3889 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Prerequisite

GSWS 0002 OR GSWS 0003 OR ENGL 1300

Since COVID-19 shut down the world in 2020, we have been surrounded by stories about health, medicine, and disease that cut across every aspect of our lives. This seminar explores the relationship between scientific knowledge and narrative: how do we tell stories about science and medicine? How is medical knowledge made culturally meaningful? How can thinking about storytelling as a craft make us better at communicating complex ideas about public health, medical knowledge, and their myriad social dimensions? People enjoy stories about science and medicine whether consumed as a podcast, magazine article, novel, Netflix special, or public talk – however, the popularity and the real-world urgency of this content endows the storyteller with great responsibility. This seminar takes the “story” in history seriously and uses methods from the history of medicine to help students produce compelling, contextually nuanced stories about medicine and culture, health and society. We will learn from sources including science fiction, pandemic journalism, historical scholarship, and popular science media when comparing and contrasting how medical subjects are translated into a story for particular audiences and mediums. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Why did Lance Armstrong get caught? Why do Kenyans win marathons? Does Gatorade really work? In this course, we won't answer these questions ourselves but will rely upon the methods of history, sociology, and anthropology to explore the world of the sport scientists who do. Sport scientists produce knowledge about how human bodies work and the intricacies of human performance. They bring elite (world- class) athletes to their laboratories-or their labs to the athletes. Throug readings, discussions, and original research, we will find out how these scientists determine the boundary between "natural" and "performance- enhanced," work to conquer the problem of fatigue, and establish the limits and potential of human beings. Course themes include: technology in science and sport, the lab vs. the field, genetics and race, the politics of the body, and doping. Course goals include: 1) reading scientific and medical texts critically, and assessing their social, cultural, and political origins and ramifications; 2) pursuing an in-depth semester- long research project that will focus on "un-black-boxing" the metrics sport scientists and physicians use to categorize athletes' bodies as "normal" or "abnormal." For example, you may investigate the test(s) used to define whether an athlete is male or female, establish whether an athlete's blood is "too" oxygenated, or assess whether an athlete is "too" fast (false start). Requirements therefore include: weekly readings and participation in online and in-class discussions; sequenced research assignments; peer review; and a final 20+page original research paper and presentation. Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: STSC 4114 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

What is disease? In this seminar students will ask and answer this question by analyzing historical documents, scientific reports, and historical scholarship (primarily 19th and 20th century U.S. and European). We will look at disease from multiple perspectives -- as a biological process, clinical entity, population phenomenon, historical actor and personal experience. We will pay special attention to how diseases have been recognized, diagnosed, named and classified in different eras, cultures and professional settings.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

During the second half of the twentieth century, overlapping waves of social reform movements agitating for civil rights, women's rights, peace, environmentalism, and gay rights reshaped the U.S. political and cultural landscape. Physicians, other health care professionals, and organized patient groups played important roles in all of these movements. This seminar investigates the history of this medical activism, making special use of the Walter Lear Collection in Penn Libraries' Kislak Center. Readings, discussions, and student research projects analyze the relationships between this history and the political dimensions of individual and population health in the late twentieth century.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course interrogates the connections, collaborations and conflicts between medicine and the criminal justice system throughout the 20th and 21st century United States. We will look at the historical feedback loops between these two institutions, giving attention to how medical experts have become involved in, suggested reforms and bolstered punitive and carceral practices as well as instances when incarcerated people, bodies and minds were used and abused for medical research. We will consider the role of medicine in different parts of the carceral system, including expert witnesses in courtrooms and access to medical care in jails and prisons, and look at moments in history when carceral institutions and spaces became clinical laboratories aiding in critical moments of medical “progress." The course gives special attention to the role of sex, gender, race and disability in these interactions, both intimate and institutional, and students will engage with frameworks from black studies, disability studies, queer studies, science studies as well as histories of psychiatry, medicine and technology.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Subject

HSOC

Type

alias

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

(SNF Paideia Program Course) This Capstone will begin by considering recent bioethical literature on the importance of lived experience in both scholarship and public policy debates, as well as the biases that attach to this type of knowledge. The course readings will center on case studies we will pick as a class that are grounded in equally valid, but conflicting, first-person accounts — possible examples include autism, cochlear implants, and physician assisted suicide. Ultimately, students will be asked to interrogate a deeply held position by taking the opposing side in a research paper that incorporates both academic literature and the lived experience of others. TW: discomfort at some point in the semester is very likely, and students may end the semester more confused than they started — but hopefully with a greater sense of epistemic humility, a key goal of this Capstone. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

the University Feminist literature has identified care work – “everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we can live in it as well as possible” – as central to the organization of society. This approach has placed care at the center of such diverse domains as social life, reproduction and aging, health and medicine, activism and politics, even environmental change. This capstone encourages students to explore care work through the lens of Philadelphia and the university, either through engaging archival materials at Penn Libraries or through ethnographic or other research modalities. A central goal of the course is to give students the opportunity to do intensive original research, with frequent feedback and guidance. Importantly, while the capstone papers that are developed in the course of the semester will take care work as a focus, the papers will be primarily historical and/or social in their focus and mode of analysis. They will thus engage questions such as: what does care look like in practice? What is the relationship between care work and politics? What are the uses and limits of care work as an analytic framework? How have historians, anthropologists, and others thought about care work in the past and how do new developments challenge these understandings? Students will be encouraged to focus their thesis on an existing body of research data such as archival materials, which will be explored throughout the semester and which can also be supplemented through additional research strategies. Additionally, students will locate, read, and make use of relevant secondary literature from fields such as history, sociology, anthropology, and allied fields. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit University of Pennsylvania Catalog 2001

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This course is designed to provide HSOC students with the tools necessary to undertake original research, guiding them through the research and writing process. Students will produce either a polished proposal for a senior thesis project, or, if there is room inthe course, a completed research paper by the end of term. Students work individually, in small groups and under the close supervision of a faculty member to establish feasible research topics, develop effective research and writing strategies, analyze primary and secondary sources, and provide critiques of classmates'drafts. Students must apply for this couse by December 1.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Medicine as it exists in the United States today is profoundly technological. Many folks residing in the U.S. regard it as perfectly normal for clinicians to examine patients with instruments, for specialists to expose people’s bodies to many different machines, and for those machines to produce data that is mechanically/electronically processed, interpreted and stored. People are billed technologically, prompted to attend appointments technologically, and buy everyday consumer technologies to protect, diagnose, or improve our health. (Consider, for example, air-purifiers, heart rate monitors, pregnancy testing kits, blood- sugar monitoring tests, and thermometers.) Yet even at the beginning of the twentieth century, devices such as these were scarce and infrequently used by American physicians and medical consumers alike. Over the course of this semester, we examine how “technology” came to medicine’s center-stage in the U.S., and what impact this change has had on medical practice, institutions, and consumers alike. Technology & Medicine in Modern America fulfills the Capstone research requirement for the HSOC major. By the end of the course, students will have honed their skills in primary and secondary source research and in constructing an academic argument and paper. Not Offered Every Year Also Offered As: STSC 4427 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

This seminar challenges students to encounter and interpret the city around them in unconventional ways. During a deadly pandemic that has profoundly disrupted all aspects of society, just as the question of public commemoration has vigorously and sometimes violently re- entered our country's public discourse, one question has remained surprisingly neglected: How do we remember epidemics? This course confronts this question through an analysis of traumatic epidemics in Philadelphia's history, and of the broader landscape of public memory. We devote special attention to the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, but we also consider the 1918-1919 influenza, AIDS, and COVID-19, among others. Students conduct archival, documentary, site-based, and other kinds of research in the process of analyzing the origins, course, and consequences of epidemics, as well as the nature of public commemoration

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Immigration, and Urban Growth, 18th-21st C. Philadelphia's Lazaretto quarantine station was built in 1799 to protect the city after a series of catastrophic yellow fever epidemics. In its time, the Lazaretto was a gateway through which goods and people from many regions of the world passed before entering Philadelphia (sometimes after temporary detention). This course uses the Lazaretto as a gateway to the history of American public health, immigration, and urban growth. Our exploration of those histories is not limited to events that happened at the Lazaretto, nor to the period of its quarantine operations (1801-1895), nor even to Philadelphia, but rather uses the very local and very human stories of this unusual site as a point of entry into larger American and global stories. Coursework includes site visits to the Lazaretto and to a variety of local partner institutions, including the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Mutter Museum, Puentes de Salud, and Sayre Health Center. Students undertake extensive research projects covering some combination of the course's themes, including discussions of how historical interpretation can facilitate and enhance public engagement and activism. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit 2026-27 Catalog | Generated 08/03/26

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Race has been, and remains, a central issue to the delivery and experience of healthcare in America. This course will examine a variety of issues and cases studies to examine how the patient-doctor has been negotiated, defined, and contested upon the basis of race. This course is designed to further develop students' research, analytical and writing skills in a collaborative atmosphere. Students will complete an original research paper through critical reading and step-wise assignments that will culminate in a final project. By the end of the course, students will have honed skills in primary and secondary source research, and the construction of an academic, analytical argument and paper. Students will build an argument based on their analysis of primary sources, and appropriately situate their argument within the literature of the core HSOC disciplines (anthropology, sociology, and history). In addition, student will continue to develop skills in critical analysis through weekly reading assignments

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Socioeconomic inequality and marginalization have defined population health on local, national, and global scales for centuries. This undergraduate research seminar investigates the relationships between neighborhood environments (physical and social) and community health in Philadelphia. The course focuses on Black and immigrant neighborhoods between 1820 and 1920. We incorporate medical and public health literature from that time period along with census data, newspaper and periodical accounts of the neighborhoods, insurance and other maps, and a wide range of archival documents to assemble multidimensional profiles of the neighborhoods at various points in time, relating their physical and social characteristics to their health outcomes. This class is part of the Penn-HSP Partnership. We use resources from the collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania as well as other specialized libraries and collections, and HSP staff are available to assist students with their research projects.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

The twenty-first century dawned for the United States with the airplane hijackings of September 11, 2001. That event has been characterized as traumatic for individuals at crash sites who witnessed or narrowly survived the destruction taking the lives of many around them, for those who grieved the loss of loved ones, and also for people who had no direct connection whatsoever either to the danger or to personal loss. What can it mean to have a single word apply to such divergent experiences? In considering this question, we will first interrogate our premise term, “trauma,” to understand its definitions and its uses under a variety of circumstances and across different disciplines. Specifically, we will draw on secondary readings from psychology, sociology, history, and literary and cultural studies to explore whether and how cultural trauma (as well as similar concepts, including social and collective trauma) might be distinct from psychological trauma. We will also draw on primary sources, including within American popular culture, whose commonly accessible texts such as film and television occasion a site for meaning construction, negotiation, and contestation about historical events across a diversely and differentially situated population. This approach structures our assessment of the implications of viewing an historical occurrence as “traumatic” for a group of people.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Research and writing of a senior honors thesis under faculty supervision.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu

Independent primary research under faculty supervision to fulfill the capstone research requirement.

Subject

HSOC

Type

course

Edition

2026-2027

Source

catalog.upenn.edu