Disease, discrimination, and public engagement

Module overview

Deadly illnesses have frequently been invested with a great deal of symbolic and cultural significance. This interdisciplinary module will introduce you to how various diseases and conditions (AIDS, cancers, obesity, Covid-19, and mental health issues and illnesses) became metaphors for rejection and marginalisation. It analyses the ways in which cultural, medical, political and societal discourses can entwine and impact on the self-representations of the patients. As well as exploring disease-related discrimination and its impact on the self, you will examine anti-discrimination strategies. You will then have the opportunity to put all of this into practice through the development of a socially and politically responsive public engagement project.

This highly innovative module is paired with MEDI1032 : Student Selected Unit 2, option Medicine and Culture. Students in this module will thus work for eight weeks with Medical students in order to create public engagement activities through a variety of forms that might typically include posters, exhibitions, educational material for schools, websites, or videos.

Aims and Objectives

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

of the use of illnesses as a metaphor
of ways in which medical discourse is inflected by social and cultural norms
of historical and ethical contexts of disease-related discrimination.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

to debate questions about the relevance of the Humanities to Medicine (and vice versa).
to engage with the wider public about scientific subjects.
to plan and develop projects in a group.

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

to draw on theoretical arguments in your writing/creative outcome
to think and write critically about the relationship medicine and culture
Identify and analyse different perceptions and experiences of illnesses
to analyse the relationship between social and historical context and

Learning and Teaching

Teaching and learning methods

This module will be taught in weekly lecture for the HUM students followed by a two-hour seminars with the MEDI1032 students. NB: MEDI1032 students will have separate lectures. The seminars will allow students to work on their projects under the module leader supervision.

Study time
Type	Hours
Preparation for scheduled sessions	14
Completion of assessment task	60
Wider reading or practice	10
Independent Study	40
Project supervision	16
Lecture	10
Total study time	150

Resources & Reading list

General Resources

Bibliography. Cohn, S. K., Epidemics: Hate and Compassion from the Plague of Athens to Aids (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Hamlin, C., Cholera: The Biography (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2009). Kraut A.M., Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes and the Immigrant Menace. (New York: Basic Books, 1994). O'Brien, G., Contagion and the National Body, The Organism Metaphor in American Thought (London: Routledge, 2018). Sontag, S. , Aids and its Metaphors (New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989). Sontag, S. , Illness as metaphor (London : Penguin, 2002). Watts, S., Epidemics and History: Disease, Power and Imperialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).

Assessment

Assessment strategy

Students will complete their public engagement project, present their group work with Medical students, and write a reflective piece on the process of working as a group/or a short essay.

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Collaborative Project	45%
Group Oral Presentation	10%
Reflective account	45%

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Breakdown
Method	Percentage contribution
Reflective account	100%

Repeat Information

Repeat type: Internal & External