Health, Illness and Healing
Final Research Project
Choose one of the following epidemic or pandemic diseases: Bubonic Plague, Smallpox, Leprosy, SARS, Polio, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, or H1N1. If you have another widespread epidemic or pandemic you want to write about please send me an e-mail for permission.
The first section of your paper should be a detailed explanation of the origins of the disease, and how it spread. You also should trace the history of how it affected the human population for the time period in which it was prevalent. If the disease is still affecting large numbers of people (such as HIV/AIDS), you can pick a specific time period to discuss. What were the attempted medical and social interventions and preventions during that time period?
The second part of the paper should focus on the anthropological contexts of the disease. How would a medical anthropologist view this disease? You should select specific concepts from the course learning activities. For example, you could include a detailed discussion of how the disease fits into either the ecological/evolutionary model of disease, or the political-economy model of disease. Discuss it from a global health viewpoint, or from a structural violence viewpoint. You could bring in concepts such as stigma, or social inequalities. Make sure to include several of the course concepts in your discussion, and cite the appropriate academic sources.
You should conclude your paper by responding to the question – if a medical anthropologist could go back in time to when this disease was prevalent, what could they contribute to the understanding of this disease? What specific contributions would they make? For example, if there was stigma surrounding the disease, what type of information about the stigma of this disease would an anthropologist research? What cultural factors relate to the rise and spread of this disease, etc.? How would a medical anthropologist be able to contribute to the understanding of this disease? In other words, your paper should not be a clinical or medical discussion of the disease, but an anthropological one using the concepts and theories you learned about in class.
