University of Toronto's history of international health course

This presentation will discuss the graduate course "History of International Health," taught at the University of Toronto. The course provides a critical historical perspective on many of the contemporary problems of international health. It explores the ideologies, institutions, and practices of the field of international health from its imperial origins to the present, covering the role of health in empire-building and commercial expansion; the perennial fears of pandemics and their economic consequences; the “class-ing,” “race-ing,” and gendering of international health through attention to sex, maternity, fertility, and productivity; and the power and contest over defining and addressing the diseased mind, body, and soul of the non-metropolitan subject. Through examination of historical sources (documents and films) and scholarly research, we seek to understand the political, scientific, social, and economic underpinnings of the principles and activities of the international health field, its embedded cultural values, and its continuities and discontinuities.