HST 128 - Medicine & Power in African History

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR (students beginning prior to Fall 2024): Meets general academic requirement HU and DE.
Meets Explore Core requirement (students beginning Fall 2024 and later): HS and GP
This course offers an introduction to the history of medicine, healing, and disease in Africa from the precolonial period to the present. We will explore how Africans have innovated, struggled, and adapted in efforts to create healthy communities in the face of changing social, political and environmental contexts. We will also study the role of medicine in European colonization in Africa and the advent of global health campaigns on the continent. Through these topics, we will ask how different groups’ claiming of the power to heal has shaped African societies over time. A major theme of this course will be the dynamic interactions of various forms of healing, both “traditional” medicine and “biomedicine,” in African history. A second major theme will be connections between medicine and political authority in African societies over time.