3.00 Credits
In this course, we explore the social and cultural history of 20th and early 21st century American medicine through the depiction of health care practitioners and health care systems in Hollywood movies. We use films as our central primary source, watching thirteen movies during the semester. Movies reveal a great deal about what was taken for granted at the time of each film's production. We examine how a range of social and professional conditions affected medicine over a century, including gender and race relations; physicians' paternalism and patients' autonomy; medical technology and expectations for care and cure; and ethical and professional norms for medical research and decision-making in-patient care. Readings from a variety of secondary and primary sources help us to put these films into their historical contexts.