11110259 - Anglais civilisation - histoire des idées 2

From 19th century snake-oil peddlers to the prescription opioid epidemic of the 2010s, from the discovery of germs at the turn of the last century to covid-19, America’s approach to its own health and well-being, its organization, and its social and financial cost, continues to befuddle. Health, both mental and physical, public and private, is closely interwoven with almost every aspect of life in the United States – work, food, politics, sexuality, gender, race, age, wealth, poverty and, above all, the preservation of life.

This class intends to explore the construction of the notion of “public health” in the US over the last two centuries, from the infancy of American medicine to the rise of the pharmaceutical industry, exposing and discussing the connections between health, medicine and science on the one hand, and welfare, minorities, capitalism, economic and religious conservatism, and the role of the State(s) in the safeguarding of American lives on the other. Among other things, it will address the invention of mental health, the history of eugenics, the ongoing battle for health insurance, racial and gender discrimination in access to healthcare, the struggle against drug addiction, as well as the current pandemic and the role it played in undoing a government.

Recommended Bibliography:

• ROSEN George, MORMAN Edward, FEE Elizabeth, A history of public health, Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.
• ROTHMAN David J, The discovery of the asylum, New York : Aldine de Gruyter, 2002.
• STEVENS Rosemary, American Medicine and the Public Interest: Updated Edition with a New Introduction, Berkeley : University of California Press, 1998.
• SCHUSTER David G., « The Rise of a Modern Concept of “Health” », in A Companion to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2017, pp. 255‑267.

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