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69249-01 - Practical course: Tuberculosis in Africa - Approaches to Writing the History of a Disease (3 CP)
| Semester | fall semester 2023 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers | Danelle Van Zyl-Hermann (danelle.vanzyl-hermann@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | This course introduces students to different approaches in medical history-writing through a focus on tuberculosis. We start by critically assessing existing scholarship on TB – the bulk of which has focused on European and American contexts in the 19th and first half of the 20th century, and offer narratives of scientific progress and triumph over disease. We consider how scholars’ approaches reflect ideological and historiographical trends, what such histories reveal and what they obscure. Next, we address the comparative lack of historical scholarship on tuberculosis in African contexts. We dedicate extensive time to working with health-related primary sources (textual, oral, visual, material, and digital) from different African settings and periods, and exploring how these might be used to write the history of a disease. This includes considering the application of different concepts (e.g. ‘medical modernity’; ‘gaze’), theories (e.g. gender, structuralist approaches) and scales of analysis (global, micro and molecular). The course will also include a visit to an archive and to an exhibition concerned with medical progress and knowledge production – these, too, we assess critically as historical sources and artefacts. In the process, we debate questions which go to the heart of not just historical analysis, but human experiences and societies: What is normal and what is pathological? What is natural and what is social? Who decides? What are the implications for – for instance – health policy, social perceptions and individual agency? And how does this change over time? |
| Bibliography | J.A. Greene, ‘Disease’ in T. Meyers (ed), A cultural history of medicine in the modern age. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021, pp.55-83. J.F. Murray, ‘A century of tuberculosis’, Am J Respir Crit Care Med, 169 (11), 2004, pp.1181-1186. https://doi.org/10.1164/rccm.200402-140OE C. Gradmann and A.W. Mbuya, ‘Kibong’oto: The history of global tuberculosis control seen through local archives’, Michael, 16, 2019, pp.270-292. |
| Admission requirements | Studierende der Geschichte aller Studienstufen sowie Studierende anderer Studienfächer, in deren Module die Übung verknüpft ist. Bei Überbelegung werden Studierende der Geschichte bevorzugt zugelassen. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Friday | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
Dates
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Friday 22.09.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Friday 29.09.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Friday 06.10.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Friday 13.10.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Friday 20.10.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Friday 27.10.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Friday 03.11.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Friday 10.11.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Friday 17.11.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Friday 24.11.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Dies Academicus |
| Friday 01.12.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Friday 08.12.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Friday 15.12.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Friday 22.12.2023 | 12.15-14.00 | Departement Geschichte, Seminarraum 4 |
| Modules |
Modul: Archive / Medien / Theorien (Bachelor's degree subject: History) Modul: Areas: Afrika (Master's degree program: European History in Global Perspective) Modul: Theorie (Master's degree subject: History) Module: Fields: Knowledge Production and Transfer (Master's degree program: African Studies) Module: Fields: Public Health and Social Life (Master's degree program: African Studies) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment details | Aktive Teilnahme. |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | no repetition |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Departement Geschichte |