Spring 2022 Course

University of Southern Mississippi

MW 11:00 am – 12:15 pm

Crosslisted as:

IDS 370 H001          IDS 350 H007
PHI 320 H001          ENG 332 H001
CMS 450 H002

 

Teaching Team

Dr. Kathryn Anthony
Associate Professor of Communications
School of Communications

Dr. Ian Dunkle
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
School of Humanities

Dr. Michelle McLeese
Assistant Teaching Professor of Sociology
School of Social Science and Global Studies

Dr. Emily Stanback
Associate Professor of English
School of Humanities

 

This course will focus on the bioethical questions raised by pandemics—COVID-19, but also historical pandemics. Our goal will be to explore the ethically significant sites of tension, and even breakdown, between patient and provider, as well as the public and medicine writ large. We will examine how, why, and when the goals of a physician may be at odds with the goals of the person they are treating; moments when communication is insufficient and neither party can understand one another; moments when healthcare fails to provide care, and even harms the patient. We are especially interested in the conceptual gaps, structural challenges, and biases that complicate medical encounters, and the ways that the current pandemic has called attention to the need to reexamine and possibly restructure our medical system.

This course will be team taught. Although this course will include lectures, including guest lectures, it will be discussion oriented. Over the course of the semester, students will will learn how to assess medical sources, and will complete writing assignments in a variety of genres.

 

 

Image Credit: Pieter van Halen (1661) The Plague of  the Philistines at Ashdod, Wellcome Library, CC BY 4.0