Admission requirements
BSA norm and a pass for both first year Themacolleges
Description
This course examines the medical and epidemiological history of health and healing in Africa from the early nineteenth century (with some ventures into the precolonial past, around the 16th century) to the present and will look at the interconnected histories of climate change, health, tropical medicine, colonialism, industry, disease, population control and technology. We will also critically examine changing ideas about health, climate and their relationship with colonialism, traditional medicine and biomedicine. The course also focuses on toxicity and pollution as part of ongoing extractive industries as the African continent remains a crucial source for oil, gas and minerals demanded by the rest of the world. These are extracted at a terrible cost for the environment and the people living and working there.
Our climate and the environment around us have changed rapidly and significantly over the last two centuries due to human activity, to the extent that it is now forming a global health threat. Climate change and environmental damage are usually attributed to human activity in a general sense. But if we place Africa in a global and historical perspective, the responsibility and impacts of climate change are deeply unevenly distributed. On the African continent, colonialism wrought wide-ranging and destructive socio-ecological transformation, impacting the health of populations through forced labour, exposure to pollution and toxicity, and this has continued to the present-day through capitalism, the ‘green’ energy transition and its underpinning extractive industries.
Western ideas about climate and health in Africa have changed over time, but generally ranged from “the white man’s grave” to fears of “the infectious continent”. Views about warm climates (“the tropics”) and “exotic” diseases in Africa shaped the field of Tropical Medicine and the design and implementation of colonial medical interventions. These interventions were often based on wrong assumptions of local diseases (causation), knowledge and ways of healing. Africa has long formed a scientific and medical laboratory for the development of Western biomedicine, drawing and learning from traditional medicine and practice; yet these histories have been largely forgotten.
The global COVID-19 pandemic response has dramatically shown how negative stereotypes and power differentials continue to shape medical interventions on the continent with devastating consequences. For Africa, which has a relatively young population, it turned out that the pandemic itself did not constitute the biggest health risk. The real health risk for Africa, was in fact the pandemic response imposed on the continent by the WHO, based on Western models and blueprints which were very ill-suited for the African context where the restrictions (and new austerity politics) catapulted millions of people into poverty. Global health as a multidisciplinary field rarely productively incorporates historical knowledge and in times of pandemic crisis, epidemiological histories are generally forgotten or erased. How can a historical understanding of the emergence of global health and histories of disease response inform critique and current medical interventions in Africa?
The course is structured around individual and collaborative critical reading of literature (including digital sources and documentary material) and discussion of case studies prepared by the students themselves. For the final assessment, students write a paper about a historical case study of medical interventions in Africa and present their work in class. Students also give constructive feedback on each others work, which forms part of the participation grade.
Major themes and concepts that will be covered are:
Ecological imperialism and colonial rule;
The Anthropocene and Africa;
Health, healing, and illness through medical interventions and encounters;
Medical pluralism: navigating biomedical science and ‘traditional’ medicine;
Histories of global health, pandemic response and disease outbreak response;
Industrial development, climate change, pollution and toxicity.
Course objectives
General learning objectives
The student can:
- carry out a common assignment
- devise and conduct research of limited scope, including
a. searching, selecting and ordering relevant literature:
b. organising and using relatively large amounts of information:
c. an analysis of a scholarly debate:
d. placing the research within the context of a scholarly debate. - reflect on the primary sources on which the scholarly literature is based;
- write a problem solving essay and give an oral presentation after the format defined in the first year Themacolleges, including
a. using a realistic schedule of work;
b. formulating a research question and subquestions;
c. formulating a well-argued conclusion;
d. giving and receiving feedback;
e. responding to instructions of the lecturer. - participate in discussions during class.
Learning objectives, specific to the specialisation
- The student has knowledge of a specialisation, more specifically: in the specialisation General History : of the place of European history from 1500 in a worldwide perspective; with a focus on the development and role of political institutions; in the track History of European Expansion and Globalisation: of the development of global networks which facilitate ann ever growing circulation of people, animals, plants, goods and ideas, and the central role of European expansion in this from around 1500;
- Knowledge and insight in the main concepts, the research methods and techniques of the specialisation, more specifically in the specialisation General History: of the study of primary sources and the context specificity of nationally defined histories; in the track History of European Expansion and Globalisation: of the combining of historiographical debates with empirical research of primary sources and/or the combining of various historiographical traditions through the use of innovative research questions.
Learning objectives, pertaining to this specific seminar
- The student will understand what medical history means, and what academic debates are central to the historiography of medical interventions in Africa.
- The student will be able to establish the relationship between politics and global health practices and discourses, and master the theories discussed.
- The student can independently select a case study that will be part of the paper that serves as the final assignment for the course.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
- seminar with mandatory attendance.
This means that students must be present at all the work seminars. If you are unable to attend, you must inform the lecturer in advance. The lecturer will then decide how, and whether, the missed lecture can be made up by a substitute assignment. If there are specific limitations to a class, the instructor will make this known at the beginning. If you do not meet the aforementioned conditions, you will be excluded from participation.
Assessment method
Assessment
Written paper (5,000-6,000 words based on historiography; excluding cover page, table of contents, bibliography, footnotes)
measured learning objectives: 2-4, 6-10Oral presentation (1 individual presentation on a historical case study of medical interventions/ encounters/ pluralism in Africa, which is the basis of your paper).
measured learning objectives: 2-3, 5-10Participation
measured learning objectives: 1, 3-5Assignment 1: Leading the discussion of literature and summary for one seminar; organizing debate around literature
measured learning objectives: 1,3, 5-9Assignment 2: Collaborative visual and oral presentation; work with a number of students (+/-4)
measured learning objectives: 1,3, 5
Weighing
paper: 40%
Oral presentation: 20%
Participation: 20%
Assignment 1: 10%
Assignment 2: 10%
The final grade is based on the weighted average with the additional requirement that the written paper must always be sufficient.
Resit
The written paper can be revised, when marked insufficient. Revision should be carried out within the given deadline, as published in the corresponding Brightspace course.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organised.
Reading list
Information on the required readings will be published on Brightspace.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Huizinga
Remarks
None