HPS3009H: Slavery, Medicine and Science in Historical Perspective

This course considers historical entanglements of science, medicine, and slavery. It articulates a critical reflection of both the ways in which medicine and natural inquiry supported the institution of slavery and the settings in which slavery was integral to the production of medical and natural knowledge. At the same time, the course examines the epistemic role of enslaved individuals and communities in the histories of science, medicine, and technology. In recent years, scholars have analyzed the institutional apparatuses of imperial science and medicine, paying special attention to the mobility of individuals, knowledge, practices, and objects across the globe. However, the place of slavery in historical processes of production, movement and transfer of natural and medical knowledge has only started to be explored. This course draws attention to entanglements of slavery, science, and medicine in different regions, settings, and temporalities. It considers how the study of these entanglements can potentially shift our perspective on how we think and write about our discipline. Key topics include the examination of the place of slavery in histories of: medicine and anatomy; gender and generation; medical experimentation; disease and disability; collecting and natural history; the rise of racial science; and bodies, violence and the archive.

0.50
St. George
In Class