ANT 333-000: Disease & Human Behavior (Spring 2010)

This course will examine the long-standing, dynamic interactions between human behavior and the diseases that affect us. We will survey the complex effects of demographic, political, social, ecological, and economic shifts on the diseases that have affected humans throughout history and in turn, the political, demographic, social, and psychological impacts that these diseases have had on us. Discussion topics and readings for this course will integrate evolutionary (Darwinian medicine), molecular, historical, biocultural, and social constructivist approaches to human health and disease. Topics will include host-pathogen co-evolution, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, epidemiological transitions and the rise of chronic disease and cancer, the evolution of aging, and the developmental origins of adult disease. We will survey a wide range of diseases: from those that ravaged human populations in the past, like bubonic plague (the Black Death), to those born of major changes in human activity, like tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, cancer, and syphilis, those that continue to plague humans, like cholera, and the new diseases of the modern globalized era, such as Ebola and mad cow disease.

Evaluation through several short written assignments and one term paper. This course may be used to fulfill the "Social Science and Medicine" or the "Evolution and Behavior" requirement areas for Anthropology Department majors (but not both).